a growing experience - Student Services - University of Melbourne

HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSPREDICTING SERVICE USE FROM PERCEIVED NEEDThere is a marked gap between the number of students who said they needed helpfrom either medical or counselling services between February and mid-May and thenumber who actually went to the services for help. The gap was much greater in thecase of the counselling service. If students’ perceived need of help was a genuine andrealistic appraisal of their situation, then it is of concern that a substantial percentageof students did not take action to obtain the help they needed. There is particularconcern about the 26 students who thought they needed help with problems in morethan one area of counselling but did not seek help; these students needed help in twoor all three of the areas of academic-educational, career-vocational and personalsocial-emotionalcounselling.Two approaches were employed to try to gain some insight into this issue: explorationof the factors that predict which students took positive action and examination of thereasons students gave for not taking action.In the case of both the medical service and the counselling service, a significant,positive predictor of students’ decision to act on their perceived need for help washaving friends who were known to have used that service themselves. This mightseem to be an obvious and expected association, likely to be the same for any groupof students. However, it is possible that it is particularly important for internationalstudents. Carr and her colleagues (2003) point out that communication from membersof students’ own national or ethnic group can provide valuable information forinternational students who have less experience of the host culture. Kilinc & Granello(2003) found that 50 per cent of their sample of Turkish students in the USA wouldseek informal help, largely from friends, when in need of help. Fallon (2005), in astudy of international students participating in a Foundation Studies program inMelbourne, found that students placed considerable reliance on family and friends formedical advice.The information friends can provide concerns not only factual matters about locationof services, hours of opening, and absence of fees, but also the more subjectiveaspects that are likely to intimidate the inexperienced, such as what to expect, howclients are treated and how helpful the service is. If we are looking for a means ofincreasing the proportion of international students who actually seek help when inneed of it, then the power of the friendship network would seem to be something to beharnessed.While having friends who have used the health or counselling services is a positivepredictor of international students’ decision to seek help themselves when in need,being very depressed (in the case of the health service) or highly stressed (in the caseof the counselling service) are negative predictors. At first sight, it seems counterintuitivethat depression and stress should reduce the likelihood of seeking help.Depressed or stressed students would seem to be the ones most in need of help.A possible interpretation is that the more depressed a person becomes, the stronger thesense of inertia and the less likely that decisions or actions will be taken. In fact theDepression scale includes the concept of inertia, illustrated by the item “I found itdifficult to work up the initiative to do things.”. Similarly, the more stressed a personbecomes, the more anxious they become if their work is interrupted and the lessRosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 159