PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED STRESS AND SELF ESTEEM

Abstract

The undergraduate students are exposed to various psychological issues which may significantly impact their psychological health. The current study investigated the mental wellbeing of the university students with a special focus on perceived stress, self-esteem and how these variables relate to each other. The Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale was used to measure mental wellbeing, whereas perceived stress and self-esteem were measured with the help of Perceived Stress Questionnaire and the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale. The study involved 271 undergraduate students of Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology and Liaquat University of medical and health sciences. The survey was conducted online and the results included data of 103 males and 168 female students. This research had three main hypotheses: firstly, mental wellbeing is considerably common and effective in undergraduate students; secondly, the greater the level of mental wellbeing, the greater the level of self-esteem; and thirdly, the greater the level of mental wellbeing, the lesser the level of perceived stress. The findings revealed that there was a high rate of low mental wellbeing among the students. The high mental wellbeing range was only 7.67 percent where 61.32 percent were in the low range. According to the classifications of Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, 5.5 percent of the students were rated as above average, 47.6 as average, 18 as below average, and 28 very low in their mental wellbeing. Regression analyses showed the support of all hypotheses of the research and indicated that mental wellbeing significantly predicted the perceived stress ( -0.673, p < 0.001) and self-esteem ( -0.677, p < 0.001) with 45.3 percent and 45 percent of the variance respectively. These results demonstrate the necessity to enhance mental health in the students of universities with specific attention to the stress-reduction measures and self-esteem improvement programmes.