Stigmatized Acculturation: Rethinking Mental Health, Stigma, and Help-Seeking In International Student Experiences

Background and Purpose: Research on international student mental health has documented acculturative stress and persistent barriers to help-seeking, yet scholars often examine acculturation and stigma as separate processes (Berry, 1997; Goffman, 1963). We addressed this limitation by advancing the concept of stigmatized acculturation. We examine how Bangladeshi graduate international students in the United States experience mental health challenges and how their understanding, coping, and help-seeking behaviors are shaped through the simultaneous influence of acculturative exposure and enduring cultural stigma.

Methods: We employed qualitative approach using in-depth, semi-structured interviews to capture participants’ subjective experiences. We recruited sixteen Bangladeshi graduate students (n = 16) enrolled in master’s and PhD programs at a U.S. Southern university through convenience and snowball sampling. We conducted interviews in Bengali, audio-recorded them with consent, and analyzed the data using an inductive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase framework. This analytic approach enabled us to identify patterns related to mental health experiences, stigma, coping strategies, and help-seeking behaviors.

Results: Our findings show that migration did not produce a straightforward transition from stigma to help-seeking. Instead, participants described a process of stigmatized acculturation, in which exposure to U.S. academic, institutional, and social environments reshaped how they understood mental health, while deeply internalized cultural stigma continued to regulate how they interpreted, expressed, and responded to distress. Participants reported a shift toward viewing mental health as integral to overall well-being, daily functioning, and academic performance; however, this cognitive transformation did not translate into behavioral openness. They remained cautious about disclosure and hesitant to seek formal support. Participants experienced multiple, intersecting stressors including academic pressure, immigration uncertainty, financial precarity, housing challenges, and social isolation that intensified psychological distress while increasing the perceived risks of seeking help. They described stigma as a culturally embedded system of meaning that framed mental distress as weakness, overthinking, or lack of faith, leading them to question whether their suffering was “serious enough” to justify care. Within diaspora communities, participants navigated a dual dynamic of support and surveillance: co-ethnic networks provided practical and emotional assistance but also reproduced stigma through fear of gossip and judgment, reinforcing selective disclosure and self-silencing. In response, most participants relied on individualized coping strategies such as journaling, walking, exercise, music, and prayer, while professional help-seeking remained limited, ambivalent, and often concealed.

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings demonstrate that acculturation does not displace stigma but reshapes how it operates in everyday life, producing a persistent gap between increased awareness and constrained help-seeking. By advancing the concept of stigmatized acculturation, this study contributes to a more integrated understanding of immigrant mental health. The findings underscore the need for culturally responsive and structurally informed mental health services that address both stigma and the broader institutional and social conditions shaping international students’ experiences. Future research should examine how these dynamics operate across diverse immigrant populations and contexts.