University students in the Czech Republic suffer from a low level of mental well-being. Research in other university student populations suggests that academic motivation, self-compassion, and self-criticism are strongly related to mental well-being. Students who are motivated to study, are kind toward themselves, and are less judgmental of themselves tend to have a high level of mental well-being. These relationships had not been evaluated in Czech students. Accordingly, this cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the relationships between mental well-being, academic motivation (intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation), self-compassion (self-reassurance) and self-criticism (self-inadequacy and self-hate). Of 130 students approached, a convenience sampling of 119 psychology students at a university in the Czech Republic completed a survey regarding these constructs. Correlation, regression, and path analyses were conducted. Mental well-being was positively associated with intrinsic motivation and self-compassion, and negatively associated with amotivation and self-criticism. Self-compassion was identified as the strongest predictor of mental well-being. Lastly, intrinsic motivation mediated the pathway from self-compassion to mental well-being, but not the one from self-inadequacy to mental well-being, and the one from self-hate to mental well-being. Our findings can help educators to identify effective means to protect students’ mental well-being. Cultivating students’ self-compassion may be helpful to protect their mental well-being. University staff and educators in the Czech Republic need to consider ways to embed self-compassion training into their students’ programmes or university life.

as loneliness, hope and self-compassion have changed during this period remains to be evaluated in this population. Loneliness is detrimental to mental health (Kotera, Chircop, et al., 2021;Surkalim et al., 2022), whereas hope aids in coping with COVID-19-related stress (Zhang et al., 2021). Self-compassion has also been found to help individuals cope with mental distress (Kotera et al., 2019;Kotera, Taylor, et al., 2021). Establishing how loneliness, hope and selfcompassion change over time in relation to mental health will provide insights into potential risk and protective factors, aiding in the identification of effective interventions to improve the mental health of HCWs (Choi et al., 2020). MethodsOnline surveys were distributed to two Facebook groups attended by HCWs and the general population at baseline (June 2020). One group was for HCWs in Japan, sharing the latest news. The other group was an information source group that discussed the latest news. Those groups were chosen as they were (a) active, highlighting the latest news Yasuhiro Kotera