The COVID-19 Pandemic has had a significant impact on learning experience, daily life, and the psychological wellbeing of university students. Especially Chinese students may have had unique experiences including the difficulty of going back home, worries about the future, and possible discrimination considering that the virus was reported as having originated from China. This paper aims to understand the experience of Chinese international students in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interview data collected from eight Chinese international students was analyzed using qualitative approach. The results showed their financial difficulties, the stress of not being able to go back home, and negative emotions such as guilt from being Chinese, anxiety about the future, loneliness from staying home, sadness, and anger from discrimination. Those stresses and negative emotions may lead to mental health problems. They also showed efforts toward regulating their emotions and accepting reality. It is necessary to provide financial support, learning support, mental health support for them and at the same time deal with the possibility of discrimination and minimize its impact.

The purpose of this study was to review research on student counseling and student support and obtain basic data on recent research trends in South Korea. Five research topics were extracted from 50 studies selected from bibliographic databases: intervention methods for student counseling and student support, attitudes and stigma toward counseling and psychological help, comparisons with other countries and cultural differences with the West, research related to Internet use, and college students’ adjustment with a focus on specific traits. The results revealed that many South Korean studies demonstrated a strong awareness of the influence of the social and cultural background of their country. Moreover, the studies sought to modify psychological methods developed in the West to suit the South Korean society and culture and apply such to clinical practice. Future research should clarify the differences between Japan and South Korea in relation to studies in which emphasis is placed on being conscious of one’s own culture and Western methods are accepted in student counseling and student support.

This paper reports on the mental health of undergraduate students in their second year and above during COVID-19. The study recruited 1,006 university students (sophomore=438, junior=307, and senior=261) who responded to an online survey. While results of the analysis revealed a negative correlation between depression and anxiety with regard to significant others’ support, depression and anxiety were positively correlated with stress due to COVID-19. Moreover, the fact that female students were more depressed and anxious than male students, indicated that there are gender based differences in depression and anxiety. Meanwhile, no grade-based difference was found in the number of students at high risk of suicidal ideation. In COVID-19, mental health of not only freshmen but also sophomores and above needs attention, and among them, junior students may have been in the dark because they had to conduct job hunting and laboratory activities with no foreseeable future. Because each grade level encountered different situations during COVID-19, it is crucial to consider support strategies flexibly.

Exposure to traumatic events is common among college students, and there is accumulating evidence that trauma has a wide range of effects on students’ mental health, academic performance, and risk behaviors. This paper reviewed research conducted primarily in the United States on the impact of trauma on the mental health and student life of college students, with the goal of providing directions for research and practice in university counseling in Japan. In addition to the prevalence and impact of trauma, some studies identified factors that influence the relationship between trauma and outcomes, including early exposure to traumatic experiences, the cumulative and complex nature of trauma, types of trauma, PTSD symptoms, self-regulatory functions related to emotions and cognition, attachment, and social support. Professional associations have published guidelines for the treatment of trauma-related conditions, and a framework for a trauma-informed approach has been developed. Clinical considerations in assessment, therapeutic alliance, safety, vicarious trauma, and training are addressed in this paper, as well as prospects for college counseling in Japan.