Being a student in a foreign country is stressful, and more so if that country’s language is different from one’s own. Studying at the graduate level in the United States is particularly stressful, because the system puts so much pressure on students to perform well and independently.

Typical challenges for college and university students in the United States, both foreign and domestic, include homesickness, “time management,” and “stress management.” Most schools have some form of “counseling service” to help students with these and with the more difficult mental-health issues that some students face.

You can look on your school’s web site to learn what counseling services it offers. The web has other counseling-related sources for students. For example, the University of Chicago Student Counseling and Resource Service has a "virtual pamphlet collection." It addresses many mental-health topics and has links to many other helpful sites. The University of Iowa’s Counseling Service offers a list of "self-help resources."

Some Chinese students have mental-health problems. Generally their ideas about the causes of and best responses to such problems are different from the Americans’ ideas. Chinese students are generally reluctant to ask counselors, psychologists, or psychiatrists for help. They often keep their problems to themselves and seem to believe that working harder and being more determined will allow them to overcome any emotional or psychological difficulties.

Experience shows, though, that most people need help to overcome serious mental-health problems. American college and university officials encourage Chinese and all other students to visit the counseling service if they find themselves persistently depressed, unhappy in their relationships, unable to eat or sleep properly, subject to sudden changes in mood or outbursts of anger, or in other ways not able to function constructively in normal daily life.