Communicating Issues of Students in Relation to Mental Health and Identifying Blind Spots of Support Networks of Year Abroad

Abstract

This study identifies students’ mental health issues that are unique to the year/study/period1 abroad programme to start and it draws attention to the interchangeably used terms that refer to mental health related concerns. By employing on-line corpora, it carries out quantitative analyses of terms used when mental health related issues are communicated between 1991-1994 mainly in Britain and as of 2017 in various Englishes. Based on these corpus analyses, not only the mostly used and
diminishing terms but also emerging terms are identified. Whilst mental illness remains the most used term over the decades, it is found that mental health issue/s and anxiety disorder/s are rapidly increasing their usages. The study further explores mental health crisis/crises, the third fast growing term in terms of their usages, in the context of period abroad. Based on the clinical definition by the Joint commissioning panel for mental health (JCPMH), it examines the support network of students
abroad who face mental health crises by suggesting a worksheet, which analyses the roles of period abroad coordinators and support staff of both home and host institutions by simulating a crisis case.
The suggested worksheet identifies blind spots of an existing support network and varied roles that
period abroad coordinators are expected to undertake. This study further supports the notion of the
heavy reliance on period abroad coordinators who have been under a pressure to carry out varied
and specialist roles at times of mental health crises of students on their period abroad.