A Qualitative Study On Mental Distress Of Vietnamese Students In The U.S.A. In The Covid-19 Era

Abstract

Objective: This paper aims to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the mental distress of the Vietnamese students in the USA. We explore different root causes of mental distress among international students who are away from their home country, their loved ones, and being isolated from school and community due to this outbreak.
 Design: In-depth interviews were conducted to probe the reasons for mental stress during the pandemic and the narrative textual analysis was subsequently performed to analyze the results. This research includes the interviews of 20 Vietnamese students in the USA during the COVID-19 era.
 Results: The textual analysis showed that the mental distress of these Vietnamese students were caused by limited access to on-campus facilities and activities, limited access to public services including grocery shopping, transportations, clinics, the possibility of being infected, isolated living condition due to the lockdown order, and inability to go back to the home country when wanted.
 Conclusions: We found that both physical attributes (e.g., living condition, internet difficulty, overwhelmed healthcare system, restricted traveling, lack of personal interaction, limited access to public services) and psychological factors (e.g., anxiety of unfamiliar teaching modality, fear of viral infection, uncertain career aspects, cultural barrier and prejudice) directly led to the mental distress of these students. Moreover, other factors such as turbulent future job markets and potential racism toward Asians in relation with “Chinese virus” may cause the mental distress of these students.

Stories of Life during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: A Qualitative Study

“…In recent months, several studies [ 9 , 10 , 11 ] that adopted a qualitative approach examined the in-depth experience during the COVID-19 pandemic of several different groups.…”

“…Pham and Shi [ 11 ] focused on Vietnamese students studying in the USA and pinpointed eight significant causes of their distress during the pandemic: unsafe living conditions, interruption of school and work, limited access to healthcare when sick, inability to return home, isolation and movement restrictions, unstable career future, racism, and cultural factors. Another analysis [ 9 ] discovered that the pandemic has negatively impacted people with eating disorders.…”

A home away from home? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of Vietnamese students’ acculturation experiences in Aotearoa-New Zealand

“…There have been many challenges facing international students in 2020 as the pandemic has taken hold. These have included travel restrictions, study disruptions, housing issues, unemployment, life plan changes, and mental wellbeing issues (N. C. Pham & Shi, 2020;Sahu, 2020;Ziguras & Tran, 2020). Loss of income from parttime employment is likely to affect students' financial situations.…”

“…N. Tran, 2011), unfamiliar diet (Lem, 2019), culture shock (A. Le, 2014;Wearing et al, 2015), mental distress (N. C. Pham & Shi, 2020), and limited activities for international students (Lem, 2019).…”

A home away from home? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of Vietnamese students’ acculturation experiences in Aotearoa-New Zealand

“…N. C. Pham and Shi (2020) USA 20 UG and PG students -Exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on Vietnamese students' mental distress -Interviews/narrative textual analysis -Factors that contributed to the students' mental distress included limited access to oncampus facilities and public services, risk of infection, isolation during the lockdown, and inability to return to Vietnam. N. T. T. Nguyen (2020) USA…”