ConnectUs Youth Spotlight EP 8— Siya and S.U.N : Starting the Conversation South Asian Communities Have Avoided for Generations

Woosung
3 days ago
4 min read

One in five South Asians reportedly live with a mood or anxiety disorder. Between 80 and 85 percent of people across South Asia do not receive adequate mental health care. Siya Dighe, a sophomore at Vandergrift High School in Austin, Texas, knows those numbers. More than that, she has seen what it looks like when the people around you have nowhere to turn, and she decided to do something about it.

Siya is the founder and CEO of South Asian United Nexus, or S.U.N., a youth-led nonprofit working to reduce mental health stigma in South Asian communities through advocacy, education, and intergenerational dialogue.

Who Is Siya

Siya is a 10th grader at Vandergrift High School in West Austin. Beyond S.U.N., she founded and leads the National History Club chapter at her school and recently had a piece published in Mind and Matter Magazine, a teen literary journal supported by the Austin Public Library. She describes herself as purpose-driven, courageous, and compassionate, and said that all three qualities showed up in full when she decided to build S.U.N.

"Founding the nonprofit required a lot of courage, because we tackle a problem that's been shunned for so many generations," she said. "And it also required a lot of compassion, because we're not trying to critique cultural values, but rather trying to build that intergenerational trust and understanding."

Why She Started

In her ninth grade year, Siya dealt with both mental and physical health struggles. While her own family was supportive, she watched friends whose families were not open to them seeking help, and she saw the spiral that put them in. She also felt the weight of cultural expectations pressing on her in a way that was hard to ignore.

"Having that exposure so young," she said, "is what made me want to be a part of the solution."

Part of what she is trying to address is the definition of the problem itself. In many South Asian households, a panic attack might prompt a trip to a medical doctor rather than a therapist, because the symptoms are read as physical rather than psychological. Mental health stigma, in Siya's words, is "the resistance to talk about mental health or acknowledge it as a kind of health."

Her short-term goal is to better understand the historical roots of that resistance. Why, despite decades of progress, does the stigma persist? She believes that understanding the history of the problem leads to more meaningful solutions. Her long-term goal is to expand access to affordable, culturally suitable mental health care for underserved groups within South Asian communities, including single parents who deal with daily stressors and rarely have time to care for themselves.

South Asian United Nexus

S.U.N. launched in March 2026 and is actively building its leadership team, with applications open through April 20. The nonprofit runs three programs.

The Mental Health Campaign is the advocacy branch. S.U.N. will share interviews with individuals discussing their mental health journeys on social media and YouTube, and host public panels on niche topics within the issue that tend to go unaddressed.

The Mentor Bridge Program connects college students with high schoolers and high schoolers with middle schoolers, offering guidance through the major academic and social transitions. The goal is to pair students with mentors who can speak honestly about what those transitions actually look like.

The Parental Inside Workshops are 60 to 90 minute sessions designed for parents. Topics include how to recognize teen burnout, how to respond to a panic or anxiety attack, and what the differences between the two are. The idea is to help a generation of parents who grew up inside the stigma find a way to support their children rather than unintentionally reinforce it.

National History Club

Siya also founded the National History Club chapter at Vandergrift, which she has built to more than 50 members and over 500 social media followers. Part of why it caught on, she says, is that Vandergrift has a meaningful population of humanities-inclined students who were not being accommodated before the club existed. The other part is the club's approach: history is taught for all learning styles, not just students who are comfortable reading and analyzing.

The chapter organized a public event at UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum with four activity stations, drawing over 200 attendees. Siya sees history and advocacy as two things that frequently come together in her thinking. She offered colorism in South Asia as an example, noting that tracing it back through history, to the associations formed between physical labor, appearance, and class, helps explain why the stigma around skin tone persists today even though the original conditions no longer exist.

UMLAUF garden activities, VHS NHCinstagram — UMLAUF garden activities, *VHS NHCinstagram*

The Wrong Aisle

Earlier this year, Siya published a piece called "The Wrong Aisle" in Mind and Matter Magazine. The piece explores identity, specifically how it feels shaped not just by who you are but by how you believe others perceive you. The central image is a puzzle, a key that does not seem to fit.

Her conclusion: "Even if your key doesn't match the puzzle, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your key."

Her Advice

When asked what she would tell students going through mental health struggles, Siya focused on small steps and practical tools. During her own difficult period, progress looked like going to class four days out of five. She recommends breathing techniques for anxiety and counting back from ten, three times, when an anxiety attack starts. For panic attacks, she suggests having one person you know will pick up the phone when you call.

She also pointed to something larger: most people simply have not been educated on how to manage mental health, and that gap is part of what S.U.N. is working to close.

What Is Next

Siya is aiming toward a future in global health policy law, where she hopes to build systems at the intersection of health and law that better serve cross-cultural and marginalized communities.

For now, she is focused on growing S.U.N. from the ground up.

To hear more from Siya, listen to her full episode on the ConnectUs Youth Spotlight, available on Spotify and across our social media platforms.