Red flag as foreign students log thousands of insurance claims for depression, anxiety
New Zealand needs a holistic wellbeing strategy, says a support group.
"It's becoming clearer that international students experience elevated levels of anxiety across a range of contexts here."
Foreign students are making thousands of insurance claims for mental health problems, and industry insiders say they need more support.
Figures shared with RNZ showed one of the four biggest providers of health insurance for foreign students received 6500 claims for mental health problems last year.
The claims represented 9 percent of all claims to that insurer in 2025 and were mostly for depression and anxiety.
The executive officer for ISANA, the association of people working with international students, Chris Beard, said the insurance figures were a red flag that should prompt decision-makers to invest in support for international students.
People who worked with international students told him they saw students presenting with problems every week, and it was putting strain on their staff.
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"Even prior to COVID, there were health professionals expressing concerns about some of the elevated anxiety and depression that international learners experience," Beard said.
"It's becoming clearer that international students experience elevated levels of anxiety and depression across a range of contexts here. So they do have unique needs that are different and distinct from domestic students. So that needs to be acknowledged."
Most investment in the industry was for marketing and promotion, and more should go into support, including training for staff, Beard said.
"We need a specialist profession at the heart, not an untrained, diverse group of people. And at the moment we still have a significant number who are relatively inexperienced and / or novice in both the schools and tertiary sector," he said.
"We have a window of opportunity to address some of these stresses and strains, but we do need industry-level acknowledgement of some of the challenges."
Asian Family Services chief executive Kelly Feng said international students were a vulnerable group and her organisation definitely saw more students with problems including anxiety, loneliness and financial stress.
"We definitely see more challenges around anxiety, depression, loneliness. A lot of financial pressure of course, family expectations," she said.
"Some students might be in a really vulnerable situation not knowing where to seek help and how to seek help so leaving unattended some of the issues [until] quite late."
That meant some ended up in crisis, Feng said.
New Zealand needed a holistic wellbeing strategy to ensure students had access to culturally and linguistically appropriate advice and support services, she said.
The International Students' Association told RNZ that mental health was an important issue but declined to comment further.
Education New Zealand chief executive David Downs said it was not hearing of any increase in mental health problems.
"All young people today have got challenges that are real in terms of modern society, and the international students probably have an extra layer on top of that which is being displaced in a different language, different cultural context etc, but we haven't seen that being a big a trend in the data."
Surveys of international students indicated extremely high satisfaction rates, he said.
"This year we've had over 5000 respond and nearly 90 percent of them are telling us that actually they're having a very strong, positive experience in New Zealand," he said.
"Only about 3 percent saying it's not as good as what they hoped ... That's probably about best in the world in terms of student experience."
Education New Zealand encouraged providers to train their staff and support students but there were no plans to change rules or make particular investment in that area, Downs said.
About 92,000 international students were expected to be in the country this year, he said.
Former Victoria University professor Colleen Ward said research showed international students experienced higher rates of anxiety and depression than domestic students.
It was not clear from the insurance figures whether more students were experiencing problems or more students were making insurance claims, she said.
However, New Zealand institutions were not doing enough to look after students, she said.
"I don't think there's significant awareness about the international student experience.
"It's intrinsically stressful to transplant oneself for international education. For example, there's so much to learn, there's so much change."
Education New Zealand's survey was of consumer satisfaction and would not capture students' mental health, Ward said.
Negative mental health was more likely if students' experience did not live up to their expectations, so it was important that recruiters did not paint an unrealistically rosy picture.
Research also showed students were more likely to experience stress if they moved to a country with a large cultural distance from their home country, Ward said.
Schools International Education Business Association executive director John van der Zwan said its members had not noticed an increase in mental health problems.
Schools emphasised quality care, strong pastoral systems, and close relationships with students, families, and homestays, he said.
(This story was first published on rnz.co.nz)
