The pressure of studying abroad is causing some Chinese students to resort to suicide, a problem some worry will be exacerbated as more Chinese students travel abroad for their schooling at younger ages.

The tragic pressures put upon Chinese overseas students has been highlighted by a number of high-profile suicides.

This past January, an MBA student at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business named Xiaolu (a pseudonym) committed suicide by jumping into the icy Lake Michigan. In October 2014, a 20 year-old second-year student at John Hopkins University named Li Yangkai jumped from his apartment building after suffering from insomnia and clinical depression. As well, 22 year-old California State University international student Lin Xu jumped from a five-story building after failing to complete a school project.

Chinese students are prone to suffer from insomnia and clinical depression when they encounter culture shock, academic pressure and communication difficulties when studying in a different country, said Qiu Yan, a US-based lawyer who has handled a number of suicide cases involving Chinese exchange students.

Sohu has reported that eight Chinese overseas students have taken their own lives due to clinical depression. Furthermore, without citing sources, Sohu said 65 percent of overseas Chinese students suffer from clinical depression, of which three percent commit suicide.

Compounding this problem is that the rate of Chinese students moving abroad for their schooling, and at increasingly younger ages. The Ministry of Education has recently said there are over half a million Chinese students studying overseas, while statistics from Open Door Data said over 300,000 of them were studying in the USA last year.

While Chinese exchange students have traditionally been graduate students, the rising affluence of China’s middle class has meant that more families are able send their children off for foreign schooling to get a jump on competition for limited opportunities.

According to Open Doors Data, Chinese undergraduates studying abroad has increased from 15 percent in 2005 to 40 percent in 2013, while the rate of graduate students decreased from 76 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2013. However, this trend of younger exchange students may also mean more Chinese who don’t have the means to cope with the stresses of studying abroad on one’s own.