International students’ social, academic and mental health challenges in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

• In Event: Experiences and lessons learned in response to COVID-19 restrictions

Proposal

Abstract
Scholarly studies have shown that international students are filled with isolation due to potential encounters with discrimination on U.S. campuses (Kang et al., 2015; Maringe and Jenkins, 2015; Russell et al., 2010). However, following the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, international students’ lives were suddenly disrupted. They were fully isolated during the lockdown period, from March to July in 2020. Several universities decided to transfer in-person classes to on-line study and evacuated students in response to the intensifying concerns surrounding COVID-19 (Zhai & Du, 2020). All lectures and research seminars were made entirely virtual. At that time, students’ academic lives were rapidly changing due to this new learning style that was implemented without sufficient time for adaptation. During this tough time, depression and anxiety became two major challenges for international students.
Research Question 1: How do international students narrate and reflect on their social life changes and on-line academic experiences when they worked remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic in a large research university?
Research Question 2: In light of COVID-19-related changes and challenges, to what extent did international students suffer from mental health issues? Did they seek help from universities or institutions?

Literature Review
Recent research has begun to investigate international students’ social life changes and on-line study experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mbous, Mohamed and Rudisill (2022) identified that during the period of school closure, university students were filled with negative emotions because their work-life balance was interrupted. All classes were changed from an in-person to an on-line format. Students’ academic lives were totally changed due to this new learning style. They had to stay at home more than usual and spent more time on computer screens finishing their group work, papers, lab work and presentations via zoom meetings. Prior to the pandemic, students went to the library, coffee shops or classrooms to meet their peers. But during the lockdown period, all in-person activities were canceled (Mbous et al., 2022). Disrupting the life-work balance added to the mental health issues among international students (Mbous et al., 2022).
Lai and colleagues (2020) have identified the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on international university students: “of all students, 84.7% had moderate-to-high perceived stress, 12.1% had moderate-to-severe symptoms of anxiety and depression, and 17.7% had moderate-to-severe symptom of insomnia” (Lai et al., 2020, p.9). Chirikov and colleagues (2020) found a similar result that undergraduate and graduate students suffered from major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, which were 2 times and 1.5 times higher than 2019, respectively, during the ongoing pandemic. Compared to American students, international students were confronted with more impediments to maintaining their mental health during the COVID-19 crisis (Chen et al., 2020). Due to language and cultural barriers, even under regular circumstances, international students are more prone to mental disorders and less motivated to seek assistance from university psychological counseling services (Alharbi and Smith, 2018; Brunsting et al., 2018). Chen and colleagues (2020) found that host countries undermined the needs of international students.

Research Findings
1.International Students Confronted with Huge Challenges about Social Life Changed and Remote Learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19, students’ learning style was changed, as they suddenly transferred from face-to-face classroom communication to remote learning. Having their lives were entirely altered posed the greatest challenge for students (Besser et al., 2020). Students were advised to avoid face-to-face discussion and had “less optimal and more physically and psychologically confining and are perhaps not very conducive to learning and performance” (Besser et al., 2020, p. 2). Fio Fio, an international student in a STEM major, comments on the interview:
When I have the zoom meeting with my advisor and lab peers, we have a lot of equations. At that time, I can only write equations on my paper and lift the paper in front of my laptop screen, showing with each other. In this way, we can fully understand each other. At the beginning of remote learning, I was very frustrated because when we met each other in our lab room, I had notes and calculations and we could discuss our lab work easily. With zoom, it was very difficult and we needed to figure out a new way to communicate effectively.
This interview suggests that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restricted students’ access to in-person discussion and interaction. Especially for STEM students, a scientific issue can be easily solved if they can meet their lab peers and advisors in person. However, during the lockdown period, most research labs closed their doors and transitioned to a work-from-home model, which posed significant challenges for students who were engaging in research in a laboratory (Speer et al., 2021). Many students had to figure out a new approach to effectively communicate with team members via the remote learning style.
2.Mental Health Issues Increased among International Students after the Outbreak of the Pandemic
In order to adjust themselves and reduce anxiety, some international students chose to make use of psychological counseling services of the university. However, due to the complicated procedures and language barriers posed by these offices, international students were marginalized by university counseling services. Qian is a Chinese student, who comments his experiences in this interview:
I really want to meet counselors in our psychological counseling services. Many things changed a lot since 2020. It felt very complicated. You know, I have some language barriers and I don’t know how to describe my symptoms such as my stress and depression to psychological counselors. So, I didn’t use our school counseling services.

Some international students felt doubly disadvantaged during the pandemic, as they found it difficult to access school resources due to language barriers. From my perspective, counseling services at universities should be more accessible to international students. Education leaders should offer more language choices and translators, assisting students from various backgrounds.

Author

• Lianzi Ouyang, State University of New York, University at Buffalo