About Homesickness

            The misconceptions of most people about homesickness are that it is nothing to worry about, and it does not lead to depression. People think usually it goes away quickly. However, it is a real sickness, not just nostalgia, and should be considered a serious condition. Homesickness is the emotional response of the brain that corresponds to depressed feelings of missing something or someone we are acquainted with. Therefore, the brain will send orders to the body, and this may cause physical pain any time you think of home.

Homesickness is not necessarily about home. It stems from our instinctive need for love, protection and security, feelings and qualities, usually associated with home. When these qualities are not present in a new environment, we begin to long for them -- and hence home. Homesickness is one of the frequent adaptation difficulties that happen to people who are far away from their native environment.

Many people experience homesickness, from kids to adults, females to males. Some examples include kids when they go to summer camp and university students when they are studying in different states and leave their families. Other examples are people who go as refugees to another country and leave their native country. The typical symptoms for homesickness are depression, dissatisfaction, frustration, insomnia, hopelessness, loss of appetite, anxiety and sometimes thoughts of suicide.  Because it has all these symptoms, it is a real sickness. For instance, depression has many of the same symptoms, including “Dramatic change in appetite, often with weight gain or loss, feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, trouble sleeping or excessive sleeping, loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed, thoughts of death or suicide. From these two sets of symptoms, we can see how they are similar. Depression is a real illness. Therefore, homesickness should be considered as a real sickness too. Their original countries and the new soldiers when they go to a strange country often feel depressed.  

International students confront many hindrances, because of the transition that they made from their native country to a new environment. Whenever the transition from their country to a new environment is big, the possibility for homesickness will be bigger. Besides that, International students have unparalleled difficulties such as a new culture, distinctive customs, and language obstruction. Language is one of the hardest obstacles that face the international students, but in spite of that, many students come to the United States to get this scholarly advantage. Many international students fear not comprehending or translating the new language, and fear their classmates, because they will pronounce the word differently or they will not use exactly the same word that they should use. The other important subject that develops homesickness is age. Young students are most probable to experience mental anxiety, which causes homesickness.

                                        

There aer many ways to treat homesickness but, a few  methods that most specialists recommend. These include normalizing homesickness or coping with homesickness, building new social networks, and  helping them accept the new place like home. A study that was done on boys and girls between ages eight and sixteen years old showed that although boys and girls usually respond equally to the different treatments of homesickness, girls require more social support than boys, and boys usually engage in a lot more delinquent behavior than girls. This study found that the best way is to cope with homesickness are: Try to refrain yourself from thoughts that  will remind you of your home, look for counseling(Talk Therapy) to help you  deal with the illness through talking about what you think and what you feel, be in contact with your family and friends back home to make sure that everything is all right, have positive thoughts about the new place, and forget how important you are.