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The first two weeks of my postgraduate program in England stand out more than the remaining eight months. After weeks of packing, impatiently waiting for a visa, checking and re-checking plane tickets, and reading articles about cultural adjustment, my wife and I resettled from Salem, Oregon to Durham, England.\u00a0We reasoned that, on the basis of positive study abroad and travel experiences in Europe and Central Asia, we would\u00a0seamlessly transition to a new academic and cultural setting. But one problem immediately presented itself:\u00a0those previous trips all included American peers, professors or guides whom we could consult on cross-cultural adaptation and rely on for friendship. Faced with the prospect of making new friends\u00a0in our postgraduate housing unit in England, we realized we had failed to develop the resilience necessary to adapt gracefully to\u00a0a foreign setting. As a result, we failed to make friends early on who could have helped us set up our apartment, explain cultural nuances and navigate the British postgraduate system of tutors and pupils.<\/p>\n
If\u00a0it’s true that Millennials spend more on travel more than any other age demographic<\/a>, why do we not give the same attention to mental health in study abroad that we do on college campuses? The American Psychological Association says college students’ mental health is a growing concern<\/a>: 41 percent of students surveyed in 2013 said anxiety was concern, with depression and relationship problems coming in next.\u00a0Mental health is, we contend, an aspect of education abroad that educators and students often overlook.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div><\/div>