Mental Health and Wellbeing of the Undergraduate Students in a Research University: A Malaysian Experience

Abstract

Globalisation and transition from a production-based to a knowledge-based economy have a profound impact on the role and value of higher education in Malaysia. The restructuring and transformation of higher education in Malaysia, particularly in the research universities, focus on critical areas such as research and innovation, teaching and learning, and industry and community engagement, are likely to affect these institutions as a whole and in particular both staff and students. The purpose of this study is to profile the mental health and wellbeing of undergraduate students of the designated research university as the university underwent institutional transformation. The findings from Phase I and Phase II of the study over the course of 2 years and using the New Mind Maps instrument suggest that undergraduate students who were exposed to the changing environment resulting from the university's transformation were experiencing a psychologically stressful and anxiety-provoking time. Implications from the findings are discussed.

Positive Psychology of Malaysian University Students: Impacts of Engagement, Motivation, Self-Compassion, and Well-being on Mental Health

“…Mental health was related to all the positive psychological constructs, except for intrinsic motivation. These significant relationships were in line with previous research (Kotera et al 2018b;Mey and Yin 2015;Rogers et al 2017) and may imply the importance of positive psychology for mental health in Malaysian students. Contrary to previous findings, intrinsic motivation was not associated with mental health.…”

“…With the recent restructuring initiated by the "Malaysian Education Blueprint 2015-2025" scheme (Ministry of Higher Education 2012), research output of Malaysian universities has been expeditiously growing: between 2012 and 2016, Malaysia increased its scholarly output by 7.2%-one of the highest growth rates of all the researched countries (e.g., 4.6% in Australia, 4.2% in China, 3.6% Singapore; Elsevier 2018). Despite its successful academic achievement, Malaysian students suffer from poor mental health (Mey and Yin 2015;Ministry of Health 2016). The primary causes for their poor mental health are financial stress resulted from heightened tuition fees, academic pressure from increased workload, and general life stress associated with family matters (Gani 2016).…”

“…A shift from treating mental illness to promoting mental well-being has been implemented at the policy level in mental health-aware countries such as Canada (Mental Health Commission of Canada 2009) and the UK (Department of Health 2009), because of the high relevance between those two constructs. A 2-year longitudinal study investigated the Malaysian students undergoing the recent educational restructure also reported the concomitant changes of mental health and well-being (Mey and Yin 2015).…”

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

“…It is no surprise that good mental health and well-being were paid attention to, as one of the United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals ('Good health and well-being';. Poor mental health of university students has been reported in many countries, commonly recording high rates of depression, anxiety, and high stress (Brown 2018;Mey and Yin 2015). Among American university students, 15% identified as having depression with 36% taking regular medication (American College Health Association 2008).…”

“…increased mental distress in youth [Ross et al 2017]; a lack of personalised support due to a large cohort [Bathmaker 2003]; social media [Jacobsen and Forste 2011]; financial stress caused by increased tuition fees [Gani 2016]), some of the leading causes of Malaysian students' mental health problems were related to heavy workload, financial difficulties, and family issues (Ministry of Health 2016;Yusoff et al 2010). A recent restructuring in Malaysian higher education, categorising public universities into research, field-specific, and comprehensive (Ministry of Higher Education 2012), may be affecting students' mental health negatively, as students underwent uncertainty in this transformation, leading to high anxiety (Mey and Yin 2015).…”