And he is not alone. Mr Liu is one of dozens of international students to have taken their own lives. The Coroners Prevention Unit unearthed another 43 suicide deaths involving foreign citizens thought to be studying in Victoria, or having recently finished their studies, between 2009 and 2015. It has prompted coroner Audrey Jamieson to call on the federal government to identify better ways to get vulnerable international students to access mental health support. While domestic students also featured prominently in the suicide statistics (with 84 locals taking their own lives within the same period), the foreign students were far less likely to have sought mental health assistance, despite their changed behaviour being noted by friends and family. This has been a common theme of research into the welfare of Australia’s hundreds of thousands of international students, which has identified growing numbers of young foreigners presenting with more severe mental health problems.

For Chinese students, the unwillingness to seek help has been linked to ‘saving face’, with young people fearing that using counselling services will bring shame upon their parents or themselves. An analysis of 27 of the deaths highlighted by the Coroners Prevention Unit revealed a similar pattern. Almost 90 per cent of the students were from Asian countries including China, India, Indonesia, Korea and Malaysia. And many of them were feeling the strain of financial or academic stress, with more than a third failing their courses. “In five of these 10 deaths, the deceased feared parents discovering the failure. In three of the deaths, the failure appeared to have implications for the student’s visa eligibility,” the prevention unit found. “Among financial stressors, inability to pay tuition fees was evident in five deaths and was directly linked to gambling losses in two of these deaths.”

Researchers from Monash and La Trobe universities have found that contrary to the stereotype of “cashed-up” overseas students, the parents of some were taking big financial risks to send their children overseas for their education, including borrowing money, putting them under immense pressure to succeed. “We’ve had a couple of students who failed when I was first here, and their parents had no idea,” said a medical officer at one university. “They were suicidal at the thought of having to tell them… and face the shame.” The researchers also found many Chinese students endured a form of “culture shock” adapting to a different style of learning. While they were used to learning by rote, in Australia they were expected to analyse information and express their opinion.

Coroner Audrey Jamieson said while it was impossible to know if Zhikai Liu would still be alive if he had received help for his suspected depression “at the very least this would have created prevention opportunities that did not otherwise exist”. The University of Melbourne was made aware of the death but did not investigate it because the incident occurred off campus. A spokesman said the university provided mental health support services for all students, including help from psychiatrists, and that staff were trained to identify students who could be struggling. “The university has and will continue to use Chinese social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat to make Chinese students aware of the various support services available to them,” he said. The coroner called for universities and other educational institutions to be forced to notify the coroner of any death of an international student to help prevent similar deaths in the future.