Psychological Distress among International Students during COVID-19 in Sweden

Abstract

In this study, we used the biopsychosocial model to frame the COVID-19 pandemic as a traumatic event and investigated the psychological distress that international students endured during the pandemic. At a large university in western Sweden we interviewed eight international students from various countries. We investigated the difficulties they encountered such as limiting policies that hindered their capacity to travel back to their native countries and build social networks through in-depth qualitative interviews. Students reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression as a result of the pandemic, according to a thematic analysis of the interviews. These challenges had a big impact on their social lives, goals, and academic achievement. Our findings demonstrate how the pandemic exacerbated these difficulties, even though some of them were related to the typical difficulties of living overseas. This study highlights how crucial it is to provide international students with specialised crisis support.