How Do I Go Back? Psychotherapy with International Students Who Face Stigma upon Their Return Home

ABSTRACT

This article offers a framework for working with international students who are preparing for re-entry to their heritage countries and who present with a social status that is treated very differently in the heritage and host countries. We discuss three specific social statuses—physical ability, gender roles, and sexual orientation—to illustrate the counseling framework developed through mutual consultation by the authors. The framework makes use of three constructs: stigma, bicultural knowledge, and stress inoculation. We illustrate the use of these principles in the context of psychotherapy with three students representing the social statuses mentioned above.

KEYWORDS:

• International students
• re-entry
• stigma
• gender
• disability
• LGBTQ
• bicultural knowledge
• stress inoculation

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the staff and trainees at the (former) Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Colorado Boulder for their thoughtful contributions to discussions about this topic. We also thank Janis S. Bohan for assistance in preparing this article.