Adapting mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for Chinese international students experiencing loneliness: a qualitative, participatory action research project complemented with imagery

In the 2020-2021 academic year,157,065 Chinese International Students (CIS) enrolled in universities throughout the UK, making up 26% of the international student (INTL) population (HESA, 2021). Research on the common stressors faced by INTL has identified an increased vulnerability to feeling lonely. According to Weiss (1973), students may experience both personal loneliness due to the loss of contact with families and social loneliness due to the loss of networks. In recent years, a third variation, cultural loneliness, has been proposed, which is triggered by the absence of a preferred cultural and/or linguistic environment (Sawir et al, 2007). Although research suggests CIS are at higher risk of suffering from the adverse effects of the cultural disparities which exist between their home and host culture (Ching et al., 2017), limited research has focused on understanding what loneliness means to CIS and how they experience this feeling. MBCT, as an intervention that addresses maladaptive social cognition, is effective in reducing loneliness in university students (Teoh et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2018). However, whether or how well it works for CIS has not been studied. Using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, we aim to understand how Chinese International Students experience and understand loneliness in UK universities and explore how MBCT can be culturally adapted to meet the needs of CIS.