At Healthy Mentality we are dedicated to the wellbeing of our students. To successfully write relevant content our community finds helpful, it was essential our team learnt more about the personal hardships our Hong Kong students endure. Thankfully, two courageous students shared their personal experiences with mental health, through two separate one-on-one interviews.
We encourage all our students to read their disclosures and realize you are never alone. By speaking up, together we are removing the stigma surrounding mental health and are encouraging others to actively seek help xx
Kirsty Tai
Age: 21
Degree: Arts (Linguistic)
Grade: Year 3
International student: Studying and living in Australia for the last 3 years.
Kirsty’s experience with Mental health:
Despite believing she doesn’t suffer from extreme mental health issues, Kirsty can often become overwhelmed during assessment periods and experience mental breakdowns. To reduce her stress levels, Kirsty will socialize with her support networks (friends), have an early night’s sleep and/or eat delicious food.
What is Kirsty’s primary sources of stress?
- Financial issues and parents’ expectations
Like many students, the universities extreme international fees make Kirsty fear failing subjects. A massive expense for her parents, this pressure is a highly common additional source of stress.
- Social isolation
When Kirsty first relocated to Australia, she had trouble making friends with local students because of language barriers and her misunderstanding of Australian culture. She believes her only opportunity to meet and establish friendships with local students is through assignments, although these relationships often end following the tasks completion.
To overcome social isolation, she firstly participated in UNSW’s orientation session for international students. Despite the uni’s intentions, Kirsty didn’t establish any support networks or friendships on the day. In addition, her willingness to participate in the uni’s “cultural mentoring program” was unreciprocated as Kirsty is still awaiting a response despite registering years ago.
- Future career pathway
Like many international students, Kristy will be actively seeking employment following her graduation this year. However, her optimism towards this new phase of her life remains low, as she constantly hears her friends express their difficulty about securing work.
She believes it is harder for international students to find jobs, then domestic students.
Has she accessed external or internal services at UNSW?
Kristy has not accessed the supporting services at UNSW. Although she is aware of the services and activities, she is not sure where they are located.
In her opinion, UNSW has done enough in providing mental health services, but international students may not access these services because of the language barriers and their poor recognition of mental health problems.
Experiencing the same issues as Kristy Tai? What difficulties have you encountered? Please share your experience through our instant messaging services on Facebook and Instagram.
With love, Cilo xx
Healthy Mentality 
That seems really useful to me!
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