For many Yale students, spring break is a much-needed time for rest and recovery. The jolt back to a busy routine following the break reminds students how little time is available for relaxation during schooltime. One of the students affected by this transition was Nana Yang ’25, an international student from Finland playing for the women’s soccer team. She said that compared to her home, rest is deemed less important, not just at Yale, but in the U.S. more broadly.
“As a high-level athlete, I’ve personally always valued rest a lot, so it was quite shocking to me when I first came to Yale that people do their work in the middle of the night,” she said.
According to Yang, the culture associated with studying and work in Finland is not as competitive as it is in the U.S. Many of her peers at Finnish universities balance an academic workload with sufficient downtime and self-care—a lifestyle she believes is more difficult to obtain at Yale.
“Especially in Yale’s environment, where everybody seems to be thriving and accomplishing all these amazing things, it’s hard to allow yourself to take the afternoon or evening off,” Yang said.
The culture at Yale heavily emphasizes the importance of outward displays of achievement. Regardless of one’s background or nationality, many students struggle with the expectation that they maintain a hefty workload both within and outside of the classroom. For international students, this struggle is exacerbated by the culture shock they face coming from countries with different values surrounding work-life balance.
For Yang, the difference is particularly striking: Her home country was just named the happiest in the world for the sixth year in a row. In this year’s World Happiness Report—published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network—Finland is closely followed by a handful of other Nordic countries: Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. The U.S. was ranked 15th.
The UN-affiliated study is based on how people rate their own individual happiness on a scale from 0 to 10. Why do people from Nordic countries deem themselves so much happier than Americans and other nations? One way to understand the complexities of judging happiness is by looking at university life, which is a time where young people can learn about healthy work habits and work-life balance before entering the workplace.
In recent years, Finland has repeatedly made international headlines for its education system. One of the most widespread misconceptions is that Finnish schools have no homework. While this is not true, the tuition-free and highly subsidized nature of the Finnish education system certainly has its merits. In Finland, it is possible to retake national high school finals and university entrance exams as many times as needed. There is generally no expectation to navigate a bureaucratically complex, university-mandated process in order to withdraw from classes or ask for accommodations. Rather, the timeline of academic advancement or lack thereof is in one’s own hands.
Even so, Finland and other highly ranked countries on the happiness scale with similar education systems have not been able to avoid mental health crises among the youth—a recently aggravated global phenomenon. Accessing sufficient therapy resources is often difficult, and mental health studies of current students paint a dark picture for projections of future happiness levels. In 2021, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare reported that every third student in higher education in the country suffers from symptoms of anxiety and depression. Statistics Finland, the Finnish national statistics organization, reported that in 2021, Finnish students sought mental health services over twice as much as they did in 2018.
Similarly, in Norway, 35% of students participating in a mental health survey in 2021 responded that they had struggled mentally that year. In Denmark, there was a nearly 50% increase in children and young patients struggling with mental health between 2009 and 2018, according to Healthcare Denmark. The U.S. is no different, where a recent survey by the Lumina Foundation found that 48% of Bachelors’ degree students in the U.S. frequently experience emotional distress. Furthermore, 36% of them had considered withdrawing from their degree programs in the past six months.
It is a sad reality that no country seems to be sufficiently caring for their youth. Still, stronger societal support structures in Finland have allowed Finland to maintain a higher level of happiness and wellbeing compared to countries like the U.S. What can these rankings teach us about what Finland is doing to keep its citizens happy?
A recent New York Times article by Penelope Colston claims that Finnish people are not necessarily unusually happy, but are simply content with their everyday lives. The piece mentions foundational sources of joy like the Finnish welfare state, Finns’ relationship with nature, and the gratitude that comes with recognizing the privilege of living in a country with an extensive safety net.
The differences between the Finnish and American approach to mental health and happiness demonstrates how perceptions of stress, rest, and work-life balance can radically vary across countries. Angeliki Vogiatzoglou ’25 is from Greece, where the average working week lasts 40.1 hours, longer than anywhere else in the European Union per Eurostat. In spite of Greek citizens working longer hours on average, Vogiatzoglou maintained that a healthy work-life balance is valued much more in her home country than in the U.S.
“Based on my experience, the goal of living a happy life and eventually working less is central to Greek culture, unlike the American one that is more work-oriented,” she said.
Beril Birlik ’25, from Turkey, noted that personal relationships play a much bigger role in maintaining mental wellbeing in her culture than in the U.S.
“I don’t see such a strong emotional safety net here, and people tend to be less willing to share their problems with their friends,” she said.
The high stress levels baked into the American education system—along with the different cultural approaches to mental health and wellbeing—have created a greater need for extensive mental health policies at Yale than in some educational institutions around the world. “Compared to the European universities many of my friends go to, Yale pays more attention to mental health issues by offering more resources,” Vogiatzoglou said.
Birlik echoed the sentiment with regards to Turkey. “Although it is very lacking, the institutional approach to mental health at Yale is better than that of universities in my country. There are more resources, and mental health is a more widely spoken issue,” Birlik said.
Mental health has been the subject of protracted, contentious debate at Yale in recent years. Many of the underlying issues in the mental crisis—like imposter syndrome, burnout, or anxiety about one’s career prospects—are problems that affect students across the country. But they are naturally exacerbated by the high-achieving, academically-rigorous atmosphere on Yale’s campus. In November, students and mental health advocates filed a lawsuit that went viral, in which complainants argued that the university systematically discriminates against students with mental health issues. In response, Yale rolled out new mental health policies that make it easier to take needed time off.
The university also recently established an international student group at Mental Health and Counseling, which aims to increase social support, reduce cultural isolation, and normalize the challenges of studying abroad for international students. The presence of this group demonstrates Yale’s cognizance that international students face a unique set of challenges.
International students like Yang, Vogiatzoglou and Birlik experience a variety of other hurdles besides just general culture shocks or new expectations surrounding work-life balances. The past years have forced many international students to grapple with unprecedented crises affecting their families and communities back home. For example, Ukrainian students must watch from afar as their country endures a brutal invasion. Turkish students have closely followed the news with bated breath as a powerful earthquake in their homeland took tens of thousands of lives and destroyed even more homes.
Political uncertainties and the complex emotions associated with living between two separate realities add to the anxieties of many international students at Yale. Birlik, for example, described being constantly worried about the political and economic situation in Turkey. She maintained that while it may not interfere with her daily life in tangible ways, it definitely affects how present she feels on campus.
“You are constantly trying to assess what is important and what you need to focus on,” she said. “Sometimes it feels a little alienating because other than my friends who come from the same country as I do, there isn’t anyone who can exactly understand what I feel.”
Some of Yale’s faculty remain uninformed about international-specific challenges, which can make receiving or even asking for accommodations more difficult for international students.
“I got a mix of responses from different faculty members when I asked for extensions and make-ups,” Birlik said when discussing her experience following the recent natural disaster in Turkey and Syria. “Not all of them were as understanding as I hoped, and it made me question whether I was blowing the situation out of proportion. That is the last thing you want to be thinking about when you are grieving for your country halfway around the world.”
While certainly not perfect, the Finnish education system—with its accommodations and support structures—sends a very different message about the value of strong mental health than the American one.
The high-pressure environment in American colleges and work environments makes it unlikely that the U.S. will surpass Finland in the happiness rankings anytime soon. The wellbeing of many international students, regardless of the happiness levels of their home countries, shows how much work is still left to be done.