Mental health of UK university business students: Relationship with shame, motivation and self-compassion

Self‐criticism and self‐reassurance as mediators between mental health attitudes and symptoms: Attitudes toward mental health problems in Japanese workers

“…Our path analyses demonstrated that while the direct effect of mental health attitudes on mental health symptoms, controlling for self‐criticism and self‐reassurance, was significant, the indirect effect was larger than the direct effect. Consistent with previous findings (Kotera, Conway, et al., ), mental health attitudes were predictors for mental health symptoms in Japanese workers, implying that the aforementioned educational training about mental health to reduce shame and negative attitudes toward mental health problems may be useful for their mental health. The larger indirect effect (vs. the direct effect) suggests that although negative mental health attitudes and shame predicted the variance in mental health symptoms, self‐criticism and self‐reassurance predicted the greater variance in mental health symptoms.…”

“…The high proportion of shame about mental health problems in Japanese workers was aligned with the emphasis of shame in Japanese culture. In particular, their community external shame and internal shame were high: More than 75% of them scored over the midpoint of the scale (Table ), and the mean scores in those two subscales were higher than U.K. worker and student samples (Kotera, Adhikari, & Van Gordon, ; Kotera, Conway, et al., ; Kotera, Green, et al., ). This may suggest that Japanese workers were particularly concerned about how their colleagues would perceive them if they have a mental health problem (i.e., community external shame) and how they see themselves (i.e., internal shame).…”

“…This study failed to do this because the only available data at the time of the study were U.K. students and hospitality workers, who would not make meaningful comparison with our sample. In addition, relating to a limitation of path analysis (Gelfand, Mensinger, & Tenhave, ), there may be a third unmeasured variable in our theoretical model (e.g., self‐compassion or social support), which could reduce mental health symptoms and self‐criticism (Harandi, Taghinasab, & Nayeri, ; Kotera, Conway, et al., ; Kotera, Green, et al., ). Last, although the Attitudes Towards Mental Health Problems Scale and the Forms of Self‐Criticising/Attacking & Self‐Reassuring Scale were translated into Japanese by bilingual researchers, validation of these scales in Japanese is needed.…”

“…For example, Kasori () found that proneness to shame in academic settings (e.g., making a presentation) was significantly higher in a depressed group of Japanese students ( n = 56) than in a nondepressed group of Japanese students ( n = 47). However, these studies did not examine a specific type of shame—shame about mental health symptoms, which has been found critical to mental health (Kotera, Conway, & Van Gordon, ; Kotera, Green, et al., ). To date, no study has reported relationships between shame about mental health symptoms and mental health in Japanese workers.…”

Ethical Judgement in UK Business Students: Relationship with Motivation, Self-Compassion and Mental Health

“…This is particularly relevant for business students because in addition to constituting the largest student group in UK universities (Higher Education Statistics Agency [HESA] 2018), the number of business students with mental health problems reached 35,500 in 2015, which was almost triple the number of business students identified as having mental health problems in 2010 (HESA 2018). Furthermore, in addition to the high prevalence, studies have noted that the severity of business students' mental health problems can be relatively high (Kotera et al 2018a). More specifically, business students have been shown to have higher levels of stress, burnout, alcohol use and depression than other student groups (Dahlin et al 2011).…”