Mental Health While Studying Abroad

Words and photos by Makenna Kaminski (unless otherwise noted). Makenna is our Jetsetter Journalist studying abroad in Sorrento, Italy, during Spring semester 2023.

Studying abroad is a stressful time. It reminds me a lot of that feeling from freshman year when everything new and everyone is different. Like freshman year, you're starting new classes in a new school, meeting different friends, learning to live with strangers, and adapting to an environment that's completely unusual from the one you've always known. With all the changes combined, it's equal parts exciting and overstimulating.

When studying abroad, you're moving across the globe, often alone or while only knowing a handful of people. With no familiar faces, like family or your college advisor, around to guide you through the specifics of this world you're thrown into, it sometimes can feel like you're going through the motions, lost in it all. Between this feeling of being lost and the homesickness, it's common to hear stories of study abroad students struggling with mental health throughout their journeys overseas. (Editor's note: ASA offers self-care tips during the pre-departure stage, advice if you have a preexisting mental health condition, and staff is available to speak with students who are concerned about their mental health while abroad so please do reach out. www.academicstudies.com/health-safety.)

During my first two weeks in Italy, two students had already decided to pack up and return to their home in the U.S. Knowing how much time and effort goes into planning a study abroad, it was so sad to see these students leave without giving the program a solid chance. I only wish that they could have spoken to someone to explain their struggles so they could have received the help they needed to feel more at home here in Sorrento.

I think that the biggest issue when going abroad is both the culture shock and not preparing yourself for what you're going to experience. If you do plenty of research before you depart and make a plan to keep a routine, you'll fare much better than those who avoid doing so.

Putting your mental health as a priority when you study abroad is a must. So many students get lost in the world of travel, excitement, and new experiences that they forget to check in with themselves, leaving them burnt out and utterly exhausted (both mentally and physically) by the time they reach midterms.

Below, I've shared some tips that might be useful to anyone who's preparing to study abroad. While some amount of homesickness and loneliness is expected as part of your journey, some of it can be avoided. By incorporating a few of these methods as well as any other mental health tricks you might want to try, you can truly make the difference between having a great experience abroad and spending your semester longing for home.

Get Enough Rest

A few weeks into our time abroad, my friends and I jokingly started using the phrase "no sleep in Europe" during our weekend travels. This originally started as a joke, but then this began to actually become our reality.

Weekend trips would begin Thursday nights, the minute our last classes ended. From there, we'd travel hours into the night to our weekend destination, sometimes not arriving until after midnight. If we were feeling energetic enough, sometimes we'd even go out on our first night and explore the city, not getting back to our hotels until it was practically morning. The following day we'd wake up at 7am and complete our full-day itinerary, fighting to squeeze everything in off three hours of sleep. Then the next two days we would do it again. We'd explore our cities to the max just to trudge home Sunday night with no energy whatsoever and still have homework to do the minute we got back to our dorms.

The craziest thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. You'll surely want to make the most of your experience while abroad, but there are ways to do this without pushing yourself to sleep deprivation.

My biggest tip is to make sure to get enough sleep whenever you can. The weekends will likely offer a lot less sleep than the weekdays, but you should still put forth an effort to get some extra hours of sleep at least one day out of each weekend.

During the weekdays, try and make a schedule in order to get the same amount of sleep you would back home. The "8-hour rule" can be a life-saver. The weekdays offer a chance to regain those lost hours of rest from the busy weekends, so gather those up as much as you can. Going to bed extra early a few nights a week will help you feel much more refreshed for your classes and you'll be ready to go the next time a weekend trip comes around.

Mental health and sleep go hand-in-hand. If you lose sleep, your brain-power will suffer immensely and the grogginess will catch up to you eventually. Even if it seems less exciting in the moment, your body will definitely thank you for the extra sleep later.

Don't Pressure Yourself to Travel Every Weekend

This is one thing that I'm still trying to work on with myself, but it's harder than it seems. Before going abroad I expected to have an equal balance of weekends home in Sorrento and those away in new cities. Yet, when I got to Italy and everyone around me started going to far-off locations every single weekend, I immediately felt pressured to do the same.

If you're the type of person that can go nonstop and travel each and every weekend, then by all means go ahead. But I think that most of us are unable to live this type of lifestyle long-term.

When it comes to weekend travel, I'm usually a two weekend on, one weekend off type of person. I like to keep on the move enough to prevent myself from getting bored, but I still need a weekend in to catch up once in a while.

There's been a few weekends though where I'm found beating myself up once again for not booking some last-minute trip. However, it's important to remember that you can't do it all. For most students, you'll be abroad for about 4 months. This sounds like a long time, but it's still not enough time to jet off and explore every city on your bucket list. There's going to be some trips that you can't go on and that's ok.

There's no reason to stress yourself out over packing each weekend with nonstop travel. Make sure to schedule some "break" weekends throughout the semester where you can give yourself a rest.

Taking some weekends off will also help you budget. Weekend trips can get pretty pricey, and it'll help you mentally to know that you're saving some money along the way. It was only a month into the semester before I started getting really worried about what I was spending, and I've seen a lot of other students struggle as well. As much as it might not be fun to cut out a weekend trip here and there, just remember that it's a lot less fun to see your bank account become completely depleted.

For your own sake, just remember to make your own choices as well and do what you want to do! Don't pressure yourself into going on extravagant trips all the time if you really want to just stay in bed. Also, don't go on trips you're not psyched about just because all your friends are going; they'll understand if you skip out!

Form a Good Schedule

One thing I've found to be difficult while studying abroad so far is the lack of a normal schedule. Between traveling and the new culture, I've found myself losing the sense of having a routine altogether.

Back home, I'm the complete opposite. Usually, I love to plan everything and set my schedule each day, so this change was a big shock for me.

I wish that I set a goal to create a solid schedule from the start. A few weeks in, I realized how much of a mess I was without one, but a lot of stress could've been saved if I were to develop this sooner.

Whether you are normally a schedule-lover or not, having a schedule (even a flexible one) can help you keep on-track with everything you have going on while abroad. Doing this will help you stay up-to-date with school and also allow you to see what free time you do have for everything else you want to do.

Simply creating a visual schedule can help so much. My newest love is the Google Calendar where you can make a color-coded and timed schedule that can be transferred across each of your devices. I've found this to be far better than a planner because I can reach it everywhere I go. It also sends me reminders for certain activities so that I can always stay on track.

Keep Up With Your Studies

Even though we're all going abroad for school, it's far too easy to fall behind with your studies once you arrive in your new city. There are so many new things to experience that it's expected to see your schoolwork fall to the back of your mind.

Yet, no matter what, your schoolwork needs to be completed at some point or another whether you procrastinate or not. Instead of letting it build up, try and keep up with it each and every day. You will find it to be much less stressful if you stay on track and do a bit each day instead of waiting.

I'm sure we've all experienced procrastination back at our home schools, but the buildup of schoolwork takes on a different meaning when it's all due the same week that you're preparing for your huge spring break in Barcelona.

It'll help you manage your stress far more easily if you take advantage of your opportunities to get your schoolwork done ahead of time. If you can find a way to get ahead a few days or a week, that's even better. This way, you can enjoy all your travels and activities even more!

Make Friends and Be Social

A tough part about studying abroad is the fact that you'll likely have to make all new friends. Like freshman year, it's common for friend groups to form quickly and for people to feel left out. It's easy to look on from the outside on occasion and feel stranded, but don't fret if you feel left out; everyone feels like this at some point.

Even though it can be scary, don't be afraid to reach out to others at your host university and meet new people! Studying abroad is all about experiencing new things, and I've found that most people will be super friendly if you make an effort. As you can imagine, you won't meet any new people without leaving the comfort of your dorm room. Try and be social as much as possible, whether that means chatting while passing in the hall or joining some new clubs.

So far, my favorite part of my experience in Italy has been the friends I've made since coming here. The friends I've made are different than those back home- here, we're all in a foreign country together and I think that makes our friendship even stronger.

I've also made a huge effort to talk to the other students in the dorms and all my classes. I'm so glad that I did this my first week, because after doing so I ended up knowing someone in each of my courses. Knowing more people in each of my classes has made it less stressful and also much more fun while in school. It's nice having people to do group projects with and chat about class topics.

Still, you don't have to feel the need to meet someone in each of your classes to have a good time. Just having a few good friends while abroad can go a long way! These are the people that will make your experience as special as it can be.

Stay in Touch with People Back Home

Even though you're about to live your life abroad in a new place, make sure you don't forget about all the people you have back home. It'll help you so much if you keep in touch with all your friends and family. This way, you can talk to them about all of your experiences, but still have your independence while living thousands of miles away.

A good phone call to someone from home can help so much if you're feeling down. During my first few weeks in Italy, there were plenty of times when I felt such a strong longing for home and for my family. Making a call back to my parents helped me ease this feeling of homesickness and made me excited to share the details about my new life abroad. This way, I gave them the piece of mind of knowing that I was doing well and I also got to get a small piece of familiarity back home.

The same goes for my friends back at my home school. I try to keep in touch with them as much as I can, and I always make sure to even just shoot them a quick text when I'm thinking about them. Every once in a while we will do a long phone call where we share all of our updates from the passing weeks. Doing this makes me feel like I'm caught up with life back home and it keeps me from feeling like I'm left out or falling behind.

Always remember that even though these people may be such a ways away, they will still always be there for you whenever you need to talk. Even if they're not right next to you, if you're having a bad day or just need to talk something out, they will be just a phone call away.

Keep up with the things you did back home

Studying abroad doesn't mean that you have to (or should) become a completely new person. If there were things that you did consistently back home, make sure to keep up with them while you're away!

The biggest thing to keep up with should be your eating habits. While it's great to try all the new foods available to you when you're studying abroad, you should still try to eat healthily and try to include some of the foods you ate back home if you can get them. For example, if you're studying abroad in Italy, you should definitely eat a ton of pasta—but you shouldn't eat just pasta. You'll feel a lot better if you do a mix of some new foods as well as some familiar ones.

What my friends and I usually do is eat a traditional American breakfast, such as eggs, a banana, or cereal, eat a healthy lunch, and then eat something Italian for dinner- like pasta, bread, or a pizza. This way we get a taste of the culture without overdoing it.

Your fitness habits are also something to keep up with. If you had a gym membership back home, you should try to get one in your host city while abroad. If you don't have access to a gym, it can be good to try new forms of exercise that you can do outside of a gym like running, yoga, or taking long walks. I've found that keeping up with my fitness routine while in Italy has helped so much with feeling normal. I walk so much during an average day in Europe, but consistently going to the gym helps me stay aligned with the fitness goals I had before traveling abroad.

If you had any hobbies back home, you should continue these as well while you're abroad. If you liked to read, play sports, draw, paint, etc., it can definitely be helpful to keep up with these activities. Try and utilize your school's resources; it's likely that your school will have a library, an art center, clubs, or sports teams. These are in place primarily for your use, so don't hesitate to take advantage of all these opportunities that are open to you. These hobbies also create a fun and easy way to calm down and ease stress, which everyone can use a dose of!

Explore and Embrace Your New City

Before studying abroad, most of us will be warned about the culture shock we'll experience. I doubted it, but culture shock really is a real thing. After I went abroad, I was equally shocked by all the new things in Italy as well as all those things that weren't in Italy. There were quite a few things that I missed from home that I couldn't get while in Sorrento and that made it harder to transition to the new environment.

There will definitely be a part of you that will always miss home. But you shouldn't let your homesickness take over all the love you can have for your new study abroad city. If you find yourself really missing home, try and find some things that you can get while abroad that remind you the most of home, whether that's a specific snack, drink, or product. One simple thing that helped my friends and I was getting comfy blankets for our beds. This was something that was easy and affordable and gave such a homey feeling to our study abroad dorm rooms.

You should also try and find the things that you love most about your host city and focus on that instead of the thoughts of longing for home. This way, you can learn to love your host city instead of spending your time disliking it for what it's not. Your host city will be different than the home you've known, but that doesn't mean it's bad. These differences can be good things if you embrace them.

There's a lot to expect when you study abroad, but if you place some focus on your mental health while you're gone, that can help benefit your entire experience. Placing some focus on yourself can help you avoid burnout, keep up with your classes, and have the best time possible.