The association of socioeconomic status with positive mental well-being and mental health seeking attitude among undergraduate students: a cross-sectional study

Introduction: The future of our healthcare services highly depends on the current generation of health science students since they are the ones who will work in the healthcare setting. Ensuring their mental well-being is the utmost priority so that they can offer top-tier quality care and services t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fata Nahas, Abdul Rahman, Al-Shami, AbdulKareem, Omar, Nuraishah
Format: Proceeding Paper
Language:English
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:http://irep.iium.edu.my/107305/1/Prisal-conference-SES.pdf
http://irep.iium.edu.my/107305/
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Institution: Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia
Language: English
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Summary:Introduction: The future of our healthcare services highly depends on the current generation of health science students since they are the ones who will work in the healthcare setting. Ensuring their mental well-being is the utmost priority so that they can offer top-tier quality care and services to people in need. Thus, this study aimed to explore the prevalence of mental well-being and mental help-seeking attitude among undergraduate health science students and the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) towards both variables. Materials and method: A cross-sectional study was conducted via online survey among undergraduate health science students from six different kulliyyahs (N=364) at International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuantan Campus. The survey contained three main parts. The first part focused on the sociodemographic and socioeconomic status, the second part assessed participants’ mental well-being using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) and the third part used the General Mental Help-seeking Attitude Scale (MHSAS) to analyse students’ mental help seeking attitude. Data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 29.0. Descriptive analysis and inferential analysis were run to address the research objectives, which include independent sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Chi-Square, Pearson correlation and linear regression. Results: Only 7.1% of the students have positive mental well-being while about 44.8% scored positive mental help-seeking attitude. There were no significant differences between the mental well-being of students with all socioeconomic characteristics (p > 0.05). Additionally, One-way ANOVA tests showed a significant association between students’ year of study and mental help-seeking attitude (p = 0.029). Furthermore, Pearson correlation and linear regression tests revealed that both WEMWBS score and MHSAS score showed a positive correlation (p < 0.01). Conclusion: Future study is essential to find out the contributing factors, prevention and intervention that can be done to help the student in need.