Acculturative Stress Among Asian Students in Australia

When foreign students from Southeast Asia come to Australia, they encounter many problems of norm conflict and cultural misunderstanding. In some cases these stresses, together with academic failure, social isolation and the strains of living in lodgings away from the supportive family, lead to emotional disturbances. Students fall into a different category from migrants. They must make a selection from the host cultural norms and exercise restraint in identification with Australian ways because they face eventual return to their home sociocultural environment. Examples from a number of case histories have been chosen. They appear to follow a regular pattern of academic failure, inability to cope with relationships with the opposite sex, and eventual mental breakdown which required hospitalization.