Designing a Mental Health Education Program for South Asian International Students in United States

Abstract

Migration predisposes international students to problems related to mental health. Students from Asia experience a totally different culture when they move to the United States. Within Asia there are several heterogeneous subgroups and one such group is that of South Asians or the students from the Indian Subcontinent that share somewhat similar culture. Often due to achievement of academic success this group is considered a “model minority” group but that is not the case when we see mental health issues. Hence, the purpose of this study was to identify predictors of mental health and psychological well being in the migrant student populations from South Asia and design recommendations for a health education intervention for this population. An extensive search of CINAHL, ERIC, MEDLINE, and Google scholar was done. It was found that predictors have been classified into three main research domains: personal growth, subjective well being, and those related to stress resistant personality. A more pragmatic classification was done that classified the factors into easily modifiable and non modifiable groups with a further break down into individual and environmental factors. For designing health education interventions modifiable individual level modifiable constructs such as acculturation, competence, coping, English proficiency, life satisfaction, religiosity, self esteem, social efficacy, and social support, must be targeted one at a time. Efforts must be made to build skills as opposed to mere cognitive development and the health education interventions must be culturally competent.

Cultural Validity of Perfectionism Among Indian Students

“…Despite this growing interest, extant research using racially and ethnically diverse participants is limited. This study extends the cross-cultural literature on perfectionism by examining personal and family origins of perfectionism among Asian Indians—an ethnic group that has been largely neglected in Western psychology (Atri & Sharma, 2006; Farver, Narang & Bhadha, 2002; Rahman & Rollock, 2004). This neglect is surprising considering the growing prominence of India.…”

Alleviating cross-cultural challenges of Indian subcontinent students: University staff perspectives

“…Similar studies could be conducted to understand the actions taken by academic and professional staff to alleviate the challenges faced by students from other regions, such as Latin America, Europe and China. Second, this paper follows Atri and Sharma's (2006) approach of treating students from the Indian subcontinent as a homogeneous group because they share a very similar culture. Still, considering the size and diversity of the Indian subcontinent, such an approach may reflect an oversimplified research design.…”

“…Although students are generally informed of the importance of academic integrity, it is not uncommon for international students to intuitively use the learning and integrity approaches from their native culture (Duff & McKinstry, 2007). This approach is particularly evident during stressful times, such as those encountered when international students attempt to adapt to the new culture and learning environment, potentially alongside other factors, such as financial pressures, homesickness, and religious challenges (Atri & Sharma, 2006;Chirkov et al, 2008;O'Reilly et al 2013), or challenges resulting from the students' specific motivation to seek education in the first instance. For example, Birrell's (2019) study of international students suggested their primary purpose for studying in Australia was to seek other visas, and their university study was considered a 'necessary evil', rather than the main focus.…”

“…In terms of the first identified gap, extant literature tends to focus on 'international students', as one group (e.g., Trice 2003;Gunawardena & Wilson, 2012), and much of this literature concentrates on Chinese students (e.g., Jin and Cortazzi 2001;Teo & Arkoudis 2019). Students from the Indian subcontinent, a reasonably heterogeneous subgroup of international students (Atri & Sharma, 2006), are ignored in the literature. Ignoring this subgroup is a major omission as a substantial proportion of international students, especially in countries like Australia, hail from the Indian subcontinent.…”

How social support predicts anxiety among university students during COVID‐19 control phase: Mediating roles of self‐esteem and resilience

“…One environmental factor that may reduce one's anxiety level is social support. Social support refers to the psychological and material resources provided by social environment to buffer against the stressful events (Atri & Sharma, 2006). Regardless of the type of support source, social support makes one feel loved, cared for, respected, and valued, affecting one's mental health in a positive way (Ao et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2021).…”