This stereotype on the patient's side hardens the situation just as it does for the therapist. Foreign students refer to these centers due to the fact that the international students face enormous pressures and problems. Although most international students have been academically successful in their native lands, many experience new and stressful academic pressures on college campuses in the United States. Feeling deprived of their personal and cultural identities, these students attempt to regain their once familiar world and self-identity through forming informal microcosms or subgroups that provide valuable support systems. In these support systems they find others who share the same problems with them.
International students have to struggle with their personal problems alone.
Chu, Yeh, Klein, Alexander, and Miller state that the most important problem that international students are concerned with is their academic adjustment. They must deal with their financial states, housing arrangements, course schedules, and scholastic performances. These are more important concerns for international students than their social contacts and being homesick. Although the psychological stress within those cultures is usually handled within a social and cultural context by family members and peers, the need of international students for professional counseling assistance is often greater than that of the American students. It seems, however, that counselors cannot expect all international students to engage in warm, intimate relationships during counseling.