Acculturative Stress and Mental Health of International Students: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to review of empirical studies to examine the relationship between acculturative stress and mental health of international students. A literature search using JSTOR, Google Scholar and J-Gate database covers the period from 1995 to 2015, the author acknowledged 20 peer reviewed papers (full text) gathering inclusion criteria. Search terms were Acculturation, Acculturative stress, mental health, and international students. This search generate many empirical studies which includes participants from African, Arabian, Asian, Bosnian, Caribbean, Chinese, Iraqi, Korean, Latino, Oceania, Mexican, Norway, Lebanese, Somali, and Greenland countries. The majority of them were from Psychology, Psychiatry, Sociology, Social Science, Anthropology, Nursing, Health Promotion, Science, Life Science and Medicine. Six parameters proposed by Zhang and Goodson (2011) have been selected to assess the internal validity of reviewed studies; viz., research design, validity coefficient of criterion measure on own data, reliability coefficient of criterion measure on own data, reliability and validity coefficient of different predictor measures on own data, statistical analysis, effect size. Current review demonstrated contradictory findings on the relationship between acculturative stress and mental health of international students. The information of acculturative stress of international students studying in India has not yet been ascertained. Theoretical and practical issues have been discussed.