Young Chinese overseas students face increasing mental hurdles
By Grace Xinyi Song
People's Daily app
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Ole Miss Associated Student Body and nonprofit group Active Minds host “Smash the Scale” in the Grove as a part of Mental Health Week to promote weight consciousness at the University of Mississippi. (Photo by Xinyi Song)

Chinese students studying overseas remains a popular choice for parents. However, it can come with unseen hurdles, namely their children’s emotional stability.

There are examples every year of Chinese students struggling with life abroad.

Helen Gao is one such example. She is studying at Harvard University and even though she has been in the United Stated for eight years, she still feels stressed due to loneliness at school, the heavy load of reading in a second language, and from missing her family.

She told the New York Times that Chinese students are the biggest international student group on most American campuses, and as such, college administrators should work harder to meet the mental health needs of those students.

In some cases, the emotional pressures of living and studying abroad can be too much for students. In October, an 18-year-old NYU freshman died when he jumped in front of an oncoming train in Manhattan.

The incident was confirmed a suicide according to the NYPD’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information (DCPI) and a witness.

Ten days later, Kirk Wu, 19-year-old Columbia University sophomore, was found dead in a shared public bathroom in a student housing residence, with a cloth wrapped around his neck. Wu was a Chinese American from Pasadena, California.

“This week and next week are midterms,” a student who asked not to be named told the New York Post. “It must have been the stress of taking the exam or finding out their grades.”

Last year, Miaoxiu Tian, a senior student studying materials engineering at Cornell University, was found dead in an apartment during the final week. She was 21 years old.

Tian had sent an e-mail to her classmate before her death, apologizing for her inability to complete the final project.

Parents weigh up options

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Curtin University graduates take pictures at the graduation ceremony in Perth, Australia. (Photo: IC)

Providing a good educational environment for children is always a big concern for Chinese parents.

With China’s economy booming in recent years, and even though Gaokao is still the main way for Chinese students to enter university, more and more parents are considering another option - sending their children to study abroad after they graduate from high school, or even earlier.

Studying abroad not only can shield their children from the pressure of the fierce competition faced by millions of college-bound exam takers in China, but can also broaden their children’s horizons, as well as improve their competitiveness in the future.

According to statistics from the Chinese Ministry of Education, from 1987 to the end of 2015, the number of Chinese students studying abroad totaled more than four million. The number of Chinese overseas students in 2015 alone reached half a million, an increase of 13.9% over 2014, while the number of younger students accounted for more than half.

However, parents often ignore the significance of whether their children are mentally mature enough to study and live alone in a foreign country away from their family and friends.

A 2013 survey of Chinese students studying at Yale showed 45% of them exhibited symptoms of depression while 29% had anxiety, far higher than the 13% of American students with depression and anxiety.

Emotional stress for younger students

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World Mental Health Day is celebrated on Oct. 10 every year to raise awareness on mental health issues around the world. (Photo: Xinhua)

Due to a lack of maturity, some younger students can succumb to temptations like buying luxury goods, or they can become addicted to games, drugs, or alcohol to try to ease their tensions.

Other students may deal with their pressures quietly, but after long-term accumulation of negative emotions, they can end up with depression or other mental health issues.

Yingchen Wang, an undergraduate Chinese student majoring in computer science at the University of Southern California, didn’t attend Gaokao when she graduated from high school in China, but chose SAT (a college admissions exam used in the US) and came to America to study.

She believes China’s educational system is not keeping pace with the economic development of the upper middle class. “When they can afford to give their kids better resources, there is no reason why they won’t do that,” she said.

Like most Chinese students studying in America, Wang sometimes gets depressed.

“The pressure of academics and life can be too much to handle for some people. Kids and their parents need to consider if they can deal with that before they make a decision,” she said. “I am not really able to cope with the difficulties and challenges I face, but I am trying to.”

Erin Folker is a junior at the University of Mississippi, who has been studying abroad in China for one year.

She thinks that studying in another country is a great opportunity for cultural exchange. “The fact that younger students are coming shows that the Chinese equivalent of SAT is a great cause of stress for high schoolers and attending school in America is one way to avoid that pressure,” she said.

“I think for a student straight out of high school the emotional stress of living alone in a foreign country would be quite real, but for a student who has already been in college for a year or two it would be manageable,” Folker said.

“If I were a parent, I would worry about a child who just graduated from high school or younger studying abroad,” she said. “Because it is stressful for someone who has never been away from home to live in a foreign country without any family or friends.”