Abstract
The issue of mental health among college students is of increasing concern during the COVID-19 outbreak. Since course characteristics of engineering college students determine the particularities of their mental health, the specific objectives of this study were: (1) to analyze the relationship between physical activity, parental psychological control, basic psychological needs, anxiety, and mental health in Chinese engineering college students during COVID-19 pandemic; and (2) to examine the mediation effect of anxiety between the relationship of basic psychological needs and mental health. A cross-sectional study was conducted among several universities in Shandong Province, China. We randomly selected 254 Chinese engineering college students from these colleges. Participants who were given questionnaires completed the Physical Activity Rating Scale (PARS-3), Basic Needs Satisfaction in General Scale (BNSG-S), Parental psychological control Questionnaire, the Beck anxiety inventory (BAI), and the Kessler 10 (K10) scale. The mediation model was conducted to assess the mediation effect of anxiety between the relationship of basic psychological needs and mental health. Among 254 Chinese college students majoring in engineering, the results showed that their mental health was in the mid-level range. Besides, physical activity and basic psychological needs is positively correlated with mental health, respectively, while parental psychological control is not correlated with mental health. Anxiety is negatively associated with mental health. Mediation analysis revealed that anxiety played a mediation role in the relationship between basic psychological needs and mental health. In conclusion, mental health of Chinese engineering college students deserves extensive attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proper intervention on physical activity, basic psychological needs, and anxiety may be beneficial to improve their mental health. In addition, meeting basic psychological needs is beneficial to reduce anxiety and improve mental health further.
Highlights
The outbreak of COVID-19 represents a public health emergency of international concern, and citizens were urged to stay at home for quarantine measures that obligate individuals to stay home or significantly limit their out-of-home activity, which may have a negative psychological impact on them (Wathelet et al, 2020)
Basic psychological needs and anxiety were significantly correlated with mental health (r = 0.148, p < 0.05; r = 0.218, p < 0.01; r = −0.318, p < 0.01)
We found that physical activity, basic psychological need was positively associated with mental health, while anxiety was negatively correlated to mental health
Summary
The outbreak of COVID-19 represents a public health emergency of international concern, and citizens were urged to stay at home for quarantine measures that obligate individuals to stay home or significantly limit their out-of-home activity, which may have a negative psychological impact on them (Wathelet et al, 2020). A web-based survey among 746,217 college students during the COVID-19 outbreak in China has found widespread mental health problems such as acute stress and depressive symptoms exist in college students (Ma et al, 2020). As a special group of students, engineering students’ learning levels are notoriously stressful and competitive, requiring long hours of study, training and practice, which affects their physical and mental health (Siddiqui et al, 2020). It is of great significance to clarify the influencing factors of engineering college students’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic to formulate corresponding intervention measures and improve their mental health. The identification of influencing factors (such as physical activity) will help to formulate corresponding strategies to improve the well-being of engineering students and maintain their mental health under the condition of high intensity of study
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