The prevalence of mental health problems among college students, both domestically and internationally, has emerged as a significant public health concern. College students are in a period of transition to independent living. Adopting a healthy lifestyle can have advantageous effects on their overall well-being. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the impact of healthy lifestyle choices on mental health problems among college students in China.
Methods
We conducted a cross-sectional online survey of college students from 2021 to 2023 at a university in Wuhan (N = 1826) using the cluster sampling method. We employed Chi-square tests and binary logistic regression to evaluate the association between healthy lifestyle choices and mental health and identify other influencing factors.
Results
A total of 969 (53.1%) students met standard criteria for poor mental health. Multiple analysis revealed that personal characteristics including female (1.280[1.035—1.582]), obesity (2.015[1.278—3.175]), general or poor health status (1.738[1.380—2.188]; 4.265[1.125—16.165]), occasionally attending health knowledge lectures or paying attention to health books and information (1.376[1.055—1.795]), healthy lifestyle choices including occasionally or seldom eating breakfast (1.393[1.105—1.757]; 1.825[1.287—2.587]), occasionally or seldom getting enough sleep (2.800[2.179—3.597]; 3.544[2.209—5.685]), a poor or very poor irregular schedule (1.792[1.222—2.628]; 3.619[1.380—9.486]), seldom or no physical exercise (1.395[1.053—1.847]; 1.377[1.066—1.779]), and often smoking (3.320[1.281—8.604]) were identified as significant predictors of poor mental health.
Conclusion
The prevalence of poor mental health among college students was high. A few types of healthy lifestyles, such as a lack of health knowledge and physical exercise, seldom eating breakfast, not getting enough sleep, an irregular schedule, and chronic smoking were closely related to abnormal psychological health symptoms. Interventions such as health education knowledge lectures and regular exercise programs should be given to college students to improve their mental health.
Mental health has emerged as a critical public health issue, drawing increasing attention globally. The period at university is a key period for college students’ personality improvement and physical and mental development [1]. It is worth noting that 43.3% of the prevalence of depression symptoms and 58.4% of the population with insomnia symptoms was found in college students [2, 3]. College students are in a period of transition to independent living. Different lifestyles developed during college would have an obviously critical influence on their later health [4,5,6]. Therefore, exploring risk factors that can impact mental health is of great significance to determine public health intervention strategies to better promote students’ mental health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes mental health as a “state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community” [7]. It has intrinsic and instrumental value and is integral to our well-being. A study of different populations reported a 23.1—43.3% pooled prevalence of mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, insomnia, to name a few) [3]. Either domestically or abroad, one of the high-risk groups for psychological disorders was college students. It is estimated that globally 12–50% of college students present at least one diagnostic criterion for one or more mental disorders [8]. The Hong Kong Mental Morbidity Survey found that 13.3% of adults have common mental disorder, with individuals aged 26–35 years having significantly higher weighted prevalence (16.5%) than the general adult population [9]. A series of surveys in 19 colleges across eight countries indicated that approximately 31% of college students screened positive for a mental health disorder [10]. A large-scale survey in China found approximately 20% of college students have poor mental health [11]. College students with bad self-rated health usually experience a range of different mental health problems [12]. Inconsistency in relationships among age, gender and mental health problems has been found in a systematic review [13]. Studies found that the younger, females, science and engineering, and medicine disciplines were associated with more abnormal psychological symptoms [14,15,16]. However, consistent across studies and the association was weak or not significant [17,18,19]. A survey of the psychological status of college students in China revealed that the risk factors for anxiety symptoms included sophomore, junior and senior grades [20].
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