This international student paid an unexpected price to study in Thunder Bay, Ont.: his mental health
PhD student Mohit Dudeja of Thunder Bay, Ont., wants changes to make transition easier
This is one of two stories in the series Making Their Mark, which explores the experiences of international students living in Thunder Bay, Ont. The series highlights the challenges they face but also how they're building community and making a positive mark on the city. You can read the other story in the series here.
Mohit Dudeja expected cold winters, a heavy school workload and homesickness when he chose to come to Canada from Delhi just over a year ago to study for his PhD.
What he didn't expect was the mental health challenges — the financial pressures and social isolation that many international students experience in Canada.
Dudeja is completing a joint program involving Brock University in St. Catharines, the University of Windsor and Lakehead University, all in Ontario. Currently based in Thunder Bay, his research focuses on the experiences of queer Indian international students like himself in small Canadian cities.
The first issue the 30-year-old faced after arriving in northwestern Ontario was finding housing. Initially, he paid two months of rent for a shared room, but moved out after five days due to the living conditions.
"It was extremely dirty," said Dudeja. "It was worse than a public washroom."
Then, he encountered a number of rental scams — people would send him photos of attractive houses at low prices and ask for money before booking a showing. Thankfully, Dudeja's PhD supervisor warned him about fraud.
"I didn't expect that from a country like Canada," Dudeja said.
Canadian colleges and universities are seeing a record number of international students, with Immigration Minister Marc Miller estimating the country is on track to host around 900,000 international students this year.
But from Dudeja's perspective, these institutions aren't ready for the influx.
"[The housing crisis [is] not just in Thunder Bay — it's across Canada … [and] universities are not prepared."
His suggestions include more on-campus housing, providing international students subsidies for on-campus living and lowering international students' tuition.
There are currently 1,120 beds for students in on-campus residences at Lakehead, and the school has plans to add 40 more next year.
Financial strains impact mental health
While Dudeja's first semester in summer 2022 was in person at Brock University, his classes at Lakehead that fall were online.
"Those initial days were very difficult. I was super alone and [had] no friends," he said. "It was also kind of a shock and a disappointment because that's not how I imagined it to be."
The high cost of living also took a toll. One Canadian dollar is equivalent to 60 rupees, so when Indian students arrive in Canada, the price of everything is multiplied until they start earning in Canadian currency, he said.
"I'm also the only earning person in my family," Dudeja said. "I assume that I'll move here, I'll have work to do and I'll be able to manage the finances of my family as well, but I was not able to manage my own finances."
He ended up booking a counselling appointment through Lakehead's Student Health and Wellness services, but said he didn't connect well with the counsellor.
"It became physical for me. The anxiety became so much that I was not able to focus on my studies," he recalled. "I was extremely depressed. I was not taking [a] shower for days. I was not coming out of my room. It was horrible."
On-campus services strive for flexibility
Irene Pugliese is Lakehead's manager of wellness services at Student Health and Wellness. The school's mental health supports include one-on-one counselling, specialized services, peer support and resources for self-directed help, which students tend to gravitate toward.
The school has four counsellors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, appointments were virtual, but Pugliese said more students are signing up now that there's the option to go in person again.
To prevent students from facing long wait times, each counsellor has time slots dedicated to same day/next day appointments, which serve as initial intakes. From there, students can book a followup appointment at a later date.
About 40 per cent of medical appointments booked at the school are related to mental health concerns, Pugliese said.
The school's health promotion team focuses a lot on prevention, "so that maybe students are learning about these things before they need it or before they end up in crisis."
"We don't want Student Health and Wellness to be a place that people only come to because they're sick or they're at their crisis point," Pugliese said.
There's also an online resource called WellU, where students can receive reminders to keep track of their well-being and learn about different on-campus services. An app called TalkCampus also provides peer support in more than 200 languages.
While there is no dedicated counsellor for international students, Pugliese said her department works closely with Lakehead International to share resources.
Need for culturally sensitive counselling
Anil Varughese, an associate professor at the school of public policy and administration at Carleton University in Ottawa, co-authored a study last fall about the experiences of Indian students in Canada during the pandemic.
From those they surveyed, nearly 60 per cent were at risk of major depressive disorder based on their answers and more than half were at risk of generalized anxiety disorder.
Socialization in a new culture, stress about academic performance and financial insecurity were found to be key factors contributing to poor mental health. Meanwhile, the students also lacked knowledge about how to address their mental health challenges, Varughese said.
"In some cases, even when they knew what resources were available and knew that they had a mental [health] challenge, there were other reasons like accessibility, cultural taboos … that complicated that," Varughese said.
Wait times were another barrier to accessing care, with some students waiting months for an appointment.
"International students [need] better timely and culturally competent mental health counselling, and universities and colleges need to invest in this," he said.
A turning point
Dudeja ended up returning to Lakehead Student Health and Wellness, this time connecting with a physician. He was prescribed medication, and after dealing with some side-effects, things got better.
He joined Lakehead's Pride Central group and met other queer students — though he hasn't encountered another queer Indian student like himself. Progress on LGBTQ rights has been slow in his home country, where the top court recently refused to legalize same-sex marriage.
Dudeja also started volunteering with Thunder Bay Counselling, became involved in other community projects and was elected president of the Lakehead University Graduate Students' Association.
Now, he has a platform to bring about changes he wishes he could have seen when he started at Lakehead.
Those changes include making a queer graduate student circle, starting a peer support program where students will be trained in peer counselling, and launching a listening and sharing circle at the school's Multicultural Centre. He also hopes to advocate for housing solutions for international students.
Dudeja now teaches at Lakehead's Faculty of Education and Gender Studies department as a contract lecturer.
"I'm doing so many things, and all of this is so meaningful to me and it's adding a lot to my existence."
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