Abstract
The COVID-19 epidemic has had a significant impact on society. In particular, it has had a strong impact on college students, including international students. Through an online questionnaire survey, it is found that the psychological distress experienced by international students is the result of a combination of the external environment (including the lockdown measures, social distancing, and social support) and internal factors such as values and behavior. The analysis shows that the new teaching mode and the corresponding changes in learning behavior are significantly associated with the psychological distress brought about by the COVID-19 epidemic. In addition, the influence of international students’ values also plays a significant role in their psychological distress. Collective values are conducive to the alleviation of psychological distress, while individual values have the opposite effect. At the same time, the study also reveals that if there is sufficient social support, isolation (due to lockdown or social distancing early or later on) is not necessarily directly related to psychological distress. However, only formal social support can effectively alleviate psychological distress, while informal social support does not play a similar role. These conclusions have certain policy significance for the prevention of and response to epidemics in other countries.
Highlights
Maurizio Pompili andThe outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan has spread rapidly worldwide
In order to distinguish the influences of multiple factors such as individual learning behaviors, values, and external environment on the psychological distress experienced by international students, we constructed four models
Model 3 tested the influence of values, and Model 4 tested the influence of individual learning behaviors on the psychological distress experienced by international students
Summary
Maurizio Pompili andThe outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan has spread rapidly worldwide. Almost 215 million people have contracted COVID-19 according to World Meters’ real-time data (https://www.worldofmeters.com, accessed on 4 September 2021), which has led to serious economic and social consequences worldwide [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Regarding the impact of lockdown on the general population, previous studies have shown that among the unaffected population in China, the proportions of anxiety and distress are 8.3% and 14.6%, respectively [13], and the proportions of moderate to severe stress, anxiety, and distress are 6.5–8.1%, 28.8%, and 16.5% [14] This did not slow down significantly over time [15]. Another study in Italy showed that with a long time being in a lockdown situation, there is a very significant increase in the level of depressive, anxiety, and stress symptoms [17]. To some extent, both lockdown and quarantine can be associated with isolation.
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