Mental health of Malaysian university students: UK comparison, and relationship between negative mental health attitudes, self-compassion, and resilience

Yasuhiro Kotera,Su-Hie Ting,Siobhan Neary

doi:10.1007/s10734-020-00547-w

Yasuhiro Kotera, Su-Hie Ting + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00547-w

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Abstract

Poor mental health of university students is becoming a serious issue in many countries. Malaysia - a leading country for Asia-Pacific education - is one of them. Despite the government’s effort to raise awareness, Malaysian students’ mental health remains challenging, exacerbated by the students’ negative attitudes towards mental health (mental health attitudes). Relatedly, self-compassion and resilience have been reported to improve mental health and mental health attitudes. Malaysian students (n = 153) responded to paper-based measures about mental health problems, negative mental health attitudes, self-compassion, and resilience. Scores were compared with 105 UK students, who also suffered from poor mental health and negative mental health attitudes, to make a cross-cultural comparison, to contextualise Malaysian students’ mental health status, using t tests (aim 1). Correlation, path, and moderation analyses were conducted, to evaluate the relationships among these mental health constructs (aim 2). Malaysian students scored higher on mental health problems and negative mental health attitudes, and lower on self-compassion and resilience than UK students. Mental health problems were positively associated with negative mental health attitudes, and negatively associated with self-compassion and resilience. While self-compassion mediated the relationship between negative mental health attitudes and mental health problems (high self-compassion weakened the impacts of negative mental health attitudes on mental health problems), resilience did not moderate the same relationship (the level of resilience did not influence the impact of negative mental health attitudes on mental health problems). Self-compassion training was suggested to counter the challenging mental health in Malaysian university students.

Highlights

Concerning mental health of Malaysian students still under debate, mental health is commonly defined as a dynamic state of internal equilibrium, entailing the ability to cope with life’s challenges to function in social roles (Galderisi et al 2015)
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 significant difference between Malaysian students and UK students negative mental health attitudes, self-compassion, and resilience in both Malaysian and UK students
This study explored mental health problems, negative mental health attitudes, self-compassion, and resilience in Malaysian students and UK students

Summary

Introduction

Concerning mental health of Malaysian students still under debate, mental health is commonly defined as a dynamic state of internal equilibrium, entailing the ability to cope with life’s challenges to function in social roles (Galderisi et al 2015). Among Asian university student populations, 9% of Chinese students had high prevalence of depressive symptoms (Song et al 2008), 21% of Japanese students had experienced major depressive episode over a period of a year (Tomoda et al 2000), and 41% of Hong Kongese students reported a high level of anxiety (Wong et al 2006) These raise concerns as the majority (75%) of long-term mental disorders start to develop by the age of 25 (Kessler et al 2007). The rate of Malaysian students who suffer from mental health problems doubled in less than a decade (10% in 2011 to 20% in 2016; Hezmi 2018), for example approximately 30% of medical students in Malaysia (n = 761) reported high prevalence of stress (Yusoff et al 2010), associated with depression and anxiety (Rosal et al 1997; Shapiro et al 2000)

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