Abstract
Malaysia plays a key role in education of the Asia Pacific, expanding its scholarly output rapidly. However, mental health of Malaysian students is challenging, and their help-seeking is low because of stigma. This study explored the relationships between mental health and positive psychological constructs (academic engagement, motivation, self-compassion, and well-being), and evaluated the relative contribution of each positive psychological construct to mental health in Malaysian students. An opportunity sample of 153 students completed the measures regarding these constructs. Correlation, regression, and mediation analyses were conducted. Engagement, amotivation, self-compassion, and well-being were associated with, and predicted large variance in mental health. Self-compassion was the strongest independent predictor of mental health among all the positive psychological constructs. Findings can imply the strong links between mental health and positive psychology, especially self-compassion. Moreover, intervention studies to examine the effects of self-compassion training on mental health of Malaysian students appear to be warranted.
Highlights
Mental health was associated with engagement (r(151) = − .22, p = .008), amotivation (r(151) = .40, p < .001), self-compassion (r(151) = − .60, p < .001), and well-being (r(151) = − .49, p < .001), while it is not associated with demographics (gender r(151) = .08, p = .30; age r(151) = .01, p = .88), intrinsic motivation (r(151) = − .05, p = .53), and extrinsic motivation (r(151) = .08, p = .34)
This study explored relationships between mental health, engagement, motivation, self-compassion, and well-being of Malaysian university students
Their mental health was associated with engagement, amotivation, self-compassion, and well-being
Summary
Participants had to be 18 years old or older, and a student of a Malaysian university. Students are asked why they go to university, and respond to items (e.g., “I don’t know; I can’t understand what I am doing in school” for amotivation, “In order to have a better salary later on” for extrinsic motivation, and “Because I experience pleasure and satisfaction while learning new things” for intrinsic motivation), which are responded on a 7-point Likert scale (“1” being “Does not correspond at all” to “7” being “Corresponds exactly”). For self-compassion, Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS-SF; Raes et al 2011), a shortened version of the Self-Compassion Scale (Neff 2003) was employed This 12-item 5point Likert scale (“1” being “Almost never” to “5” being “Almost always”) includes “When something painful happens I try to take a balanced view of the situation,” and the scores on the negative items (1, 4, 8, 9, 11, and 12) are reversed.
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