As almost 20% of the UBC Vancouver student body comprises international students, understanding their mental health needs is critical to developing on-campus resources and services for promoting their mental health. In the 2014–2015 MHNA, we explored the mental health needs and concerns of the first-year international students at UBC.
Methods
Informed by a PAR approach, we conducted this study in collaboration with 12 UBC Vantage College (VC) students who took the Psychology 208 course. Through recruitment notices circulated by email and posted on the UBC campus and website, we recruited 12 first-year international students (aged 18–20), the majority of whom identified themselves as female and Chinese. Seven participants were VC students who were not part of the Psychology course and three were UBC students outside of VC. Two declined to identify their programs. The VC students conducted semi-structured individual interviews with the participants and transcribed them verbatim. The textual data were then analyzed thematically to generate themes.
Findings
Four themes were identified in terms of first-year international students’ mental health concerns and needs: challenges in transitioning to UBC, student approaches to challenges related to making the transition to life at UBC, student perceptions of mental health, and student perceptions of current campus resources.
Challenges in Transitioning to UBC
Participants identified homesickness, language barriers, academic challenges, and social challenges as the primary difficulties that they and other first-year international students faced. Academic challenges in particular were discussed frequently, including adapting to UBC’s academic culture, understanding lectures, communicating with instructors and classmates, and managing the substantial demands of course work. The academic culture at UBC encourages students to generate new ideas and discuss them in class, which felt “strange” to students who were accustomed to memorizing knowledge as their primary learning strategy. Students acknowledged that their lack of fluency in English both created and aggravated their academic challenges. The main social challenge they experienced was developing friendships with domestic students due to challenges in finding time and opportunities to meet with domestic students as well as difficulty communicating in English.
Student Approaches to Challenges: Alleviating their Low Mood
Participants indicated that many of the challenges contributed to their low mood. Many of them recounted feelings of being depressed as they faced the above-mentioned challenges and identified coping strategies for addressing their depressive mood. These strategies included taking personal responsibility for their moods and attempting to address challenges on their own; seeking help from their friends, family, and faculty; engaging in enjoyable activities (e.g., shopping and eating) to distract from stressors and engage in social networking; and accessing formal resources. Most participants admitted they would not use professional mental health resources personally, or would possibly use them as a last resort only when desperate for a solution, because they were either uncomfortable about disclosing personal concerns to “strangers” or unaware of the existence of formal services.
Student Perceptions of Mental Health: Feeling, Thinking, and Behaving
Students in the study identified feeling (e.g., “nervous”), thinking (e.g., ability to “understand” surroundings), and behaving (e.g., communicating with others) as the primary areas that would be affected by mental health challenges. According to the students, managing stress was key to mental health and well-being and the strategies they used included controlling a situation, perceiving it positively, and alleviating frustration by engaging in extracurricular activities. They emphasized that it is important for all students to be aware of and look after their mental health because it is fundamental to their academic performance and sense of happiness.
Student Perceptions of Current Campus Resources
The participating students emphasized the importance of developing services that address international students’ mental health exclusively, such as offering services in their mother tongue or with counsellors from the same culture. Students also identified a list of recommendations that influenced their mental health: increasing awareness and understanding of mental health and corresponding services (beyond posters and flyers); reducing tuition costs for international students; reducing grade requirements for international students; creating mandatory social events to help with creating a social support network; and providing more language support.
Conclusions
This needs assessment uncovered the challenges that UBC first-year international students experience in transitioning from their home countries to UBC and the coping strategies that they use. It is important to underline that students seem unaware of the mental health resources and services available on campus and that they are unlikely to disclose their issues and concerns to service providers if they have not built rapport with the service providers. These findings are not transferable to all first-year international students at UBC because the majority of the participants were female, Chinese, and from VC. However, the findings call for an increased awareness among UBC faculty and staff about the acculturation process that causes stress in international students, particularly those who speak English as a second language, and for improved support for the sake of both the students’ mental health and their academic pursuits.
Posted: Feb 22, 2016