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ABSTRACT
Since the early 2000s, reports of increased rates of mental ill health among young people worldwide have received much attention. Several studies indicate a greater incidence of mental health problems among tertiary students, compared with the general population, and higher levels of anxiety, in particular, among international students compared with domestic students. Australia is host to many thousands of international students of an age when mental illnesses are most likely to surface. However, this issue has received little attention from Australian researchers. This article reports on in-depth interviews with 16 professionals working with international students at an internationalized university.
Keywords: international students, youth, mental health, health-care, integration and adjustment, higher education
Since the early 2000s, mental health policies of western countries have prioritised the development of early intervention and treatment programs specifically targeted to young people. These policy developments have been driven in part by recognition of the impacts of untreated and under-treated mental illnesses on the growth and development of young people, their educational and occupational achievements, and ultimately their nations' economic prosperity (Gore, Bloem, Patton, Patton, Ferguson, Joseph, Coffey, Sawyer, & Mathers, 2011; Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010; McGorry, 2011; Patel, Flisher, Hetrick, & McGorry, 2007). These concerns are also part of a broader context of widespread and debated claims that mental well- being has been declining in western countries since the Second World War (e.g. Busfield, 2012; Collishaw, Maughan, Natarajan, & Pickles, 2004; Horwitz & Wakefield, 2007).
Of particular concern are reports that the greatest increase in mental health problems has been among young people (Collishaw et al., 2004; Fombonne, 1995). The latest Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing shows that the highest rate of the most common mental disorders - depression, anxiety and substance misuse - occurs in people aged 16-24 years (26 %), with overall prevalence decreasing with age to around one in twenty (6 %) in the oldest age group (75-85 years) (ABS, 2008).
Researchers in the U.S. (Twenge, Gentile, DeWall, Ma, Lacefield, & Schurtz, 2010) and Britain (Collishaw et al., 2010) have argued that the mental health of adolescents and university students has deteriorated over recent decades, with study participants reporting significantly higher levels of emotional and stress-related problems than those of earlier cohorts. In...