International Students' Mental Health
A SQL dig into how length of stay shapes mental health for international university students in Japan, drawn from 268 survey responses collected in 2018.
The result I didn't expect
Depression does not peak in the first year. It peaks in the third, at an average PHQ-9 score of 9.09, squarely in the moderate range, and then improves slightly in year four. The intuitive story is that the adjustment period is the hardest stretch. The data says the hardest stretch arrives two years in, once the newness has worn off and the real decisions have not.
Depression peaked in year three, not year one.The hardest stretch wasn't the adjustment — it was two years in.
What else the data showed
Acculturative stress climbed over time rather than dropping, which points at the long-term pressures, career, visa status, identity, adding weight instead of resolving. Social connectedness stayed flat across every year, so students were not building deeper networks even after years abroad. And nearly half the sample, ninety-five students, sat in year one already carrying moderate depression, low social connection, and high stress from the start.
What to make of it
This is cross-sectional data, so it cannot trace any one student's path through the years, and I am careful not to claim it does. Still, the pattern holds together well enough to suggest something practical: mental health support for international students probably should not taper off after orientation, because on this evidence the need does not.