final project report applied statistics in economics and business topic awareness, need and ability of mental health care of university students in ho chi minh city

UEH UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
FACULTY OF FINANCE

FINAL PROJECT REPORT
APPLIED STATISTICS IN ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS
Topic: Awareness, need and ability of mental health care of university
students in Ho Chi Minh City

Instructor: Ph.D. Huỳnh Thị Thu Thuỷ
Class: FNC01 – K47
Class code: 21C1STA50802906
Group: 3
List of members:
Phan Hồng Trung Dung – 31211023396 (100%)
Trình Yến Hà – 31211025609 (100%)
Nguyễn Ngọc Minh Lộc – 31211024799 (100%)
Nguyễn Tuyết Minh – 31211025946 (100%)
Nguyễn Vũ Hải Minh – 31211024720 (100%)

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CONTENTS
I - SUMMARY.................................................................................................................................... 1
II - INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 1
1. Research problem................................................................................................................ 1
2. Rationale................................................................................................................................. 1
3. Objectives............................................................................................................................... 2
4. Information that need to be collected............................................................................2
5. Focuse and scope................................................................................................................ 3

III - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK.......................................................................................... 3
1. Understanding mental health........................................................................................... 3
2. Understanding mental disorders.....................................................................................4
3. Determinants of mental problems................................................................................... 5
4. The necessity of mental health care..............................................................................5
5. Precautions and solutions................................................................................................. 6
IV - IMPLEMENTATION METHOD............................................................................................ 6
1. Target survey subjects.......................................................................................................... 6
2. Sampling method.................................................................................................................... 6
3. Collection tools........................................................................................................................ 7
4. Statistical methods................................................................................................................. 7
5. Sampling description............................................................................................................. 7
V - RESULTS AND DISCUSSION.............................................................................................. 9
DESCRIPTIVE DATA.................................................................................................................. 9
PART 1: AWARENESS AND NEED FOR MENTAL HEALTH CARE......................9
PART 2: THE NEED AND FIRST – AID SKILLS WHEN FACING MENTAL PROBLEMS

15
INFERENTIAL DATA................................................................................................................ 18
VI – RECOMMENDATIONS, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSION......................................... 21
A)

RECOMMENDATION................................................................................................... 21

B)

LIMITATIONS................................................................................................................... 22

C)

CONCLUSION................................................................................................................ 22

REFERENCES

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I – SUMMARY
Purpose: Mental health literacy or awareness of mental health is a necessity for early
detection and intervention in mental diseases, and as a result, it has become a research emphasis in
recent decades. This study aims to investigate the attitudes towards mental health and assess mental
health literacy of students in Hồ Chí Minh universities by identifying knowledge gaps, stereotypes
about mental health problems, and their information-searching behaviors. Moreover, it investigates
how students react to factors affecting their mental health as well as mental health care status.

Methods: An online survey was distributed to 133 volunteers who are students in HCM
universities as representatives. Respondents were asked to respond to some demographic
questions and questions about mental health including their attitudes, knowledge and
perceptions, information-seeking habits, first-aid skills, and self-help strategies.
Results: Most of the respondents have heard about “mental health” and take this problem
seriously by searching for relevant information sometimes through social media. Moreover, they
knew most of the common knowledge about mental health and got a high proportion of questions
testing their awareness correctly. They have many types of stress but do not tend to rely on
professionals. Finally, they sometimes do exercise, yoga, and meditation as well as get enough
sleep, eat healthily, and strengthen their social relationships.
Conclusion: Most of the respondents have positive attitudes towards mental health and
an adequate amount of knowledge about it. Although various factors are affecting their wellbeing negatively, they tend to resolve it by themselves instead of seeking professional help. In
addition, they seem to take care of themselves properly by doing health-beneficial activities. On
this basis, not only individuals should take an effort in equipping themselves with the necessary
information, but governmental and academic institutions should also put more emphasis on

raising awareness about mental health.

II

- INTRODUCTION
1.

Research problem

Mental health literacy level of college students in Hồ Chí Minh city and their
ability to take care of themselves when facing mental health problems.
2. Rationale
The development of society is always closely associated with challenges. One of the most
basic issues which people are concerned about in this increasingly modern world is health. However,
when it comes to health, most people usually think of the physical side only, but forget another equally
vital aspect which is mental health. This status quo is even worse when today’s society often puts
humans in difficult situations and complicated events that require them to have a strong mentality to
cope with challenges. Each of us has the same possibility of getting into psychological problems.
According to statistical data in Vietnam, the annual number of suicides is up to 40,000, which is 3-4
times higher than the number of deaths due to traffic accidents, and depression, a kind of mental
illness, is responsible for about 75% of these cases. This is not a small number, and this also acts as
an alarm for us to take it more seriously when mentioning mental health.

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Unfortunately, among young people aged 18-25 in Vietnam nowadays, mental health illnesses
are widespread and show no sign of decreasing. It is estimated that at least 3 million young people

and adolescents in Vietnam are struggling with psychological problems. Although the university
environment can provide students with a huge number of opportunities to express and develop
themselves, it also brings many challenges for them, who are independent and forced to face real life
for the first time. The mental health problems of university students resulting from this fact can come
from many different reasons such as academic pressure, financial difficulties, relationships with family
members and friends as well as expectations from other people, etc. A study by Nguyen Huu Thu at
Hanoi National University in 2009 found that 79% of students suffered mild stress, 3.2% were
moderately stressed and the rest were not stressed.
Mental health problems cause unpredictable consequences, not only for people who are
suffering but also for their families and society, and the most serious one is a suicide, which none of
us wants. Nevertheless, the awareness of the high level of this problem’s danger is underrated by
people, especially university students, who are the future owners of our country. This fact leads
students to ignore mental health care and not be able to realize whether they have got psychological
problems or not, as well as not being able to control the progress of their development. It is usually
too late when they are aware of the matter, and they often have to receive undesirable consequences.
For that reason, our group has decided to carry out a research project on “Awareness, need and
ability of mental health care of university students in Ho Chi Minh City” to figure out the causes as well
as the status of mental health among Ho Chi Minh City university students. From that, we can suggest
solutions to prevent suicide, treat mental health disorders and improve the quality of student’s life so
that they can have a productive learning process. Ensuring that university students are fully supported
in all facets of life, including their mental health, is critical for laying the foundation for a healthy and
productive adulthood.

3. Objectives
We are going to survey and collect the data about the awareness, needs, and capacity
of 133 students to maintain their mental health in this project, with some specific targets:
+

Identifying and analyzing the recognition and demands to take care of the mental health,

which can evaluate the understanding, clarify the lack of knowledge of mental health of students.

+
Measuring the ability that students can keep their mental health at a safe level,
with some ways like help-seeking and first-aid skills or self-help strategies.
We expect that we will provide some useful, essential information, help them have an
overview perspective about mental health literacy to comprehend more without
misunderstanding about this, and have some ways to take care of their mental health.
4. Information that needs to be collected
The type of questions: closed-ended questions (give the respondent a
predetermined set of answers to choose from)
-

Questions about the personal information (Age, University, Ordinal scale, Majors)

-

A binary answer (yes/no):
+ Opinions about mental health (question 12,13)
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+ Have they ever heard about “mental health”
-

A scale (with five points ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree)
+ Rate how important mental health care is to students
+ Judgment about mental health

-

A scale (with 4 points ranging from Never to Regularly): Mental health care habits

-

A list of options with a single answer possible

+
The frequency that students research about mental health information: Never,
Rarely, Sometimes, Regularly)
-

A list of options with multiple answers possible:
+ According to them, what mental health-related is (question 10)
+ Which mental health ailments they know (question 11)
+ Mental health of people around students (Parents, Relatives, Friends)
+ Factors that are negatively affecting student’s mental health
+ How students deal with mental crisis
Distribute the survey and collect responses
5.

Focuse and scope

-

Target survey subject: 133 students at universities located in HCM city

-

Survey scope: Universities in HCM city

-

Survey time: This survey was done in December 2021
III - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
1.

Understanding mental health.

We use the definition given by the World Health Organization (WHO), who stated that “mental
health” is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope
with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to contribute to
his or her community”. This is also the theoretical basis for forming the questions about factors
related to mental health. Thereby, we hope to receive people's general views on the concept of
mental health, which is the first basic step to survey the level of their awareness as well as their
need and ability to take care of mental health.

For each right statement about definition of mental health, respondents will get 1 point of
mental-health-literacy score
Knowledge gaps and erroneous beliefs concerning mental health issues are both the key problem we
need to assess for early recognition and intervention in mental disorders. Some of the most common
misconceptions related to mental health (1. Depression is not a disease. It's just an imagination,
aggravating the problems of the weak/ 2. Only losers have mental disorders/ 3. Only adults have
mental problems) have been included in the questionnaire to investigate their prevalence. Advances
in neuroscience and behavioural medicine have shown that, like many physical illnesses, mental and

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behavioural disorders are the result of a complex interaction between biological, psychological, and
social factors. Therefore, they need a clear treatment regimen, just like illnesses related to physical
health. In addition, mental disorders can affect anyone regardless of their ages, their socioeconomic
status or how good their life appears at face value. This can be proved by the anxiety arising from
pressure to succeed of a young person doing well in school or the percentage ranging from 8% to
29% in the prevalence of general mental health problems in Vietnamese children and adolescents.
Dispelling myths about mental health can help break the stigma and create a culture that encourages
people of any age to seek support when they need it.

For each disagreement with erroneous belief, respondents will get 1 point of mentalhealth-literacy score
2. Understanding mental disorders.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, statistics related to mental disorders increased significantly,
such as the prevalence of depressive disorders (31.4%), anxiety disorders (31.9%) and sleep
disorders (41.1%). Therefore, understanding some common mental disorders can help people
detect them in time and get the right treatment. That is also the reason why we put some mental
illnesses in the survey to investigate the level of mental health literacy. They include:

• Anxiety disorder: The main signs are excessive worry, overthinking, perfectionism,
muscle tension, insomnia, digestive problems, etc.
•

Depression (depressive disorder): According to the World Health Organization (WHO),

depression is the most common disease worldwide and ranks second in the global burden of
disease. Depression is characterized by sadness, loss of interest in activities, and decreased
energy. Other symptoms include loss of confidence and self-esteem, inappropriate guilt, thoughts
of death and suicide, diminished concentration, and disturbance of sleep and appetite. Though
depressive feelings are common, especially after experiencing setbacks in life, depressive disorder

is diagnosed only when the symptoms reach a threshold and last at least two weeks.

• Bipolar disorder: Bipolar affective disorder refers to patients with depressive
illness along with episodes of mania characterized by elated mood, increased activity,
overconfidence and impairedconcentration.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): the patient is obsessed with something,
such as numbers, excessive cleanliness, having to arrange objects in a perfect way,
etc.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): is an obsession, fear, or tension that
occurs after a horrendous event that the patient has personally experienced or
witnessed.
•

Social anxiety disorder: People with this disorder tend to be afraid of socializing, afraid of

crowds, afraid of going out and almost want to be alone, working independently.
•
Schizophrenia: Schizophrenia is a severe disorder that typically begins in late
adolescence or early adulthood. It is characterized by fundamental distortions in thinking and
perception, and by inappropriate emotions, with signs of delusions, emotional outbursts, and
violent behavior.

For each type of mental disorder respondents know, they will get 1 point for mental –
health – literacy score

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3. Determinants of mental problems.
Modern scientific evidence indicates that mental and behavioral disorders are the result
of genetics plus environment or, in other words, the interaction of biology with
psychological and social factors. As a result, there is no single cause for mental illness,
several factors can contribute to risk for mental illnesses, such as:
a.

Biological factors: According to the World Health Report 2001, mental and behavioral

disorders have been shown to be associated with disruptions of neural communication within specific
circuits. It can be said that mental disorders are accompanied by abnormal changes in the nervous
system, and therefore have a significant impact on brain development. In addition, genetic factors
also play a role in the development of mental disorders, although its scientific basis is quite complex.

b.
Environment: This includes all factors outside the human body's mechanism of
action such as living location, personal income, the presence of major physical
diseases, the use of alcohol or drugs, family relation, study process…
c.

Life experiences and injuries, such as trauma or a history of abuse (for example, child

abuse, sexual assault, witnessing violence, etc.): Studies suggest that all significant events in life
act as stressors and, coming in quick succession, predispose the individual to mental disorders.

One of the worst consequences of a mental disorder is suicide. Unfortunately, the 18-21
age group reported the highest number of suicidal thoughts (4.4% of all young adults
aged 18-21). Additionally, a substantial number of individuals with schizophrenia attempt
suicide at some time during their illness. Globally, schizophrenic illness reduces an

affected individual’s lifespan by an average of 10 years.
In our efforts to reduce the danger of this situation, and based on the information we found above, we
have added two questions in the survey, one related to people's perceptions and thoughts about the
causes and consequences of mental disorders (1. Mental disorders have the potential to affect the
ability of the brain to function/ 2. High levels of stress can lead to mental disorders/ 3. Overuse of
alcohol and stimulants can cause mental disorders), while the remaining question aims to investigate
the influence of the factors mentioned on students' mental health in the present time.

For each facts about mental disorders that respondents considered it as true, they will
get 1 points of mental-health-literacy score
4. The necessity of mental health care.
Understanding the benefits of mental health care will motivate university students to
learn about this concept and to increase their needs for care. Consequently, we decided
to ask a question about the most important mental health care benefit from their
opinions. The question consists of the 3 most known benefits:
•
Live happier: According to the Origins of Happiness report, eliminating mental
health issues such as depression and anxiety would increase happiness by 20%,
whereas eliminating poverty would increase happiness by only 5%. In other words, the
relationship between mental health and happiness has been proved based on extensive
research.

•
Improve physical health: The link between physical and mental health is
most evident in chronic conditions:
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-

Poor mental health is a risk factor for chronic physical conditions.

People with severe mental problems are at increased risk of suffering chronic physical
problems.

People with chronic physical problems are at increased risk of developing poor mental
health.
•

Ensure work efficiency: According to the World Health Organization, depression and

anxiety alone cost the global economy approximately one trillion dollars annually due to lost
productivity. Not having a good state of mental health will make us lose the ability to endure,
handle work pressure as well as manage time. We will also easily lose focus and have

difficulty in dealing with negative feedback from customers and interacting with others.

5.

Precautions and solutions.

a.Precautions:
•
Exercise, meditation, yoga: Due to the strong link between physical and
mental health, those are all helpful techniques for reducing the negative impact of
stress.
•

Get enough sleep: Sleep is the time for the body to recover and the time
when the brain and the body relaxes after a long day of muscular activity.
•
Healthy eating: What we put on our plates will become the raw material
for our brains to manufacture hormones and neurotransmitters – chemical
substances that control our sleep, mood, and behaviour.
•
Build a solid foundation of social relations: The importance of having
friends is noted in all interviews, regardless of gender.
b.

Solutions:

•
Share with family/friends or people who are in the same situation when
you have some symptoms of mental illnesses: Sharing your troubles with others
may help you to put things in perspective and to feel that you are not alone.
•
Seek professional support: Navigating trauma, depression, and anxiety, or
other strains on mental health is complicated. Therefore, reaching out for help
from a professional, in some cases, can be the best solution to your mental
disorders.
Based on that knowledge, we have formulated 3 questions related to solutions and precautions:
one question included the precautions we mentioned above to assess students' self-help
strategies, 2 more questions about how students respond when they have a mental disorder as
well as when witnessing their friends and relatives suffering these difficulties.

IV - IMPLEMENTATION METHOD
1.
Target survey subjects: 133 students at universities located in HCM city

2.
Sampling method: Voluntary sampling method (nonprobability sampling
method)
This project uses 2 typical methods: quantitative and qualitative measure
The qualitative measure is implemented to assess the mental health
literacy of students, their information-seeking behaviors, identifying stereotypes
toward mental health problems, self-help strategies
•

•

The quantitative measure is implemented to identify interval estimation for the

population mean of mental health literacy score, quantify the difference between male and
female mental

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health literacy level and the difference between the 2 most common degrees of
the regularity of self-help behavior conducted the students (sometimes and often)
3.
Collection tools: Because of time restrictions and the complexity of the
pandemic situation, survey results are collected online via Google Form. These
students attended the survey by answering questions in this form published in a
variety of groups, social media (Facebook) voluntarily. Our group will then collect
data through the online questionnaire mentioned in the survey form.

4.
Statistical methods for data analysis:
Descriptive statistics: using a pie chart, bar chart, column chart, line chart,
area chart, doughnut chart, bubble chart, scatter diagram, stacked bar chart,
frequency distribution, dot plot, histogram, side-by-side bar chart
•

•

Inferential statistics: interval estimation, inferences about the difference between

two

populations means: independent samples, hypothesis test, inferences about the
difference between two population proportions, correlation coefficient
Question 1 to 3: asking out demographic information
Question 4 to 9: asking about their attitudes towards mental health including how
serious mental health matters to them and how they access relevant information
Question 10 to 13: testing to what extent respondents understand about mental health.
We evaluate mental health literacy by summing all the points for each question (for 1 item that
they know, they will get 1 point (question 10,11); for 1 right assessment about mental health, they
will get 1 point (question 12 choose “Right”, question 13 choose “Wrong”). The higher overall
scores they get, the higher levels of their mental health literacy.

Question 14 to 17: Ask about the reality of the mental health of respondents and
how they react to understand the need for a liable care system.
Question 18: Ask about the regularity of beneficial activities that they do.
5. Sampling description
We have surveyed students from different universities and selected 133 satisfactory samples.

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Gender

The pie chart gives information about the gender that took part in the survey. As is observed from the
graph, most of the respondents are female (95 people, accounting for 71,4% of the total), the rest are
male (38 people, accounting for 28,6% of the total), compared to a total of 100 survey subjects. It is
noticeable that there is a big difference in the ratio between male and female.

School year

Concerning the responses of the survey, a clear majority of the survey subjects are firstyear students with 86 people (91%). On the other hand, the Junior participated in only
14,3% of the sample, while the Sophomore and Senior students were the least
represented of the four types of university students, with only 10,5%.

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Major:

Overall, we can see that most of the survey respondents came from Economic Business majors (60.9% and 81 people) in terms of the overall sample. The lowest
figures on the chart are for Art - Cosmetology - Graphic Design and Fundamental
Science for about 1 person, which occupied 0.8% of the total.
V - RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

DESCRIPTIVE DATA
PART 1: AWARENESS AND NEED FOR MENTAL HEALTH CARE
•

The familiarity level of students to mental health

A significant majority of the students out of 133 students in total who were joined
in the survey have heard of “mental health” accounts for a large number, when the rate
of "yes" is 119 people, accounting for 89.5%; with the figure surpassing more than 8
times the number of students who answered "no" ( 14 students with the percentage of
exactly 10.5%) according to the bar chart above.
Assessing the data, we found that this percentage has a relatively clear difference, answering
“yes” shows that they have also learned about mental health, which will also affect their decision and

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assessment, evaluate the importance of students' mental health, so it makes sense to
have more than half of the "yes" or more. However, not all students have heard of
mental health, which shows in the remaining 10.5% of the figure.
•

The importance of mental health

Looking at the information in more detail, the rate of assessing the very important level
(level 5) of students' mental health in all years (from Freshman to Senior) of study in universities
is 87 students, accounting for almost ⅔ of figures for 65.4%, which proves that they have
relatively high attention to the importance of mental health. In each of these students’ school

years, the Freshman students rated for “very important” more than Sophomore students, Junior
students, and Senior students combined.
This is understandable because today's society develops, people not only focus on taking
care of their physical health but also care about the spiritual side. Therefore, it is impactful for
students to learn about mental health in general on their own in the media, thereby helping
students to cope with and prevent stress from occurring in their life.
•

Benefits of taking care of mental health

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If we look at the Pareto graph as a whole, nearly 20% of the total number of students
participating in the survey agreed that the benefit of mental health care is "Ensure work
efficiency" (17.3%). The next considerable benefit is the “Improvement of physical health”
(13.5%). Additionally, the level of students choosing is more pronounced as they favor "Live a
happier life", with an overwhelming percentage (68.4%), the opposite was true for only one
student choosing “No benefits” (approximately 0.8%).
It can be explained that a study by UNICEF in Vietnam published in 2017 showed that
about 30% of the burden of non-communicable diseases is due to mental health disorders. A
focus on mental health has the potential to generate more personal, social, and economic
benefits than intervention at any point in time. This shows that timely psychological support and
counseling will help us control our mood more proactively, therefore live happier.
•

Regularity of information – seeking behaviors

As can be seen from the scatter diagram, Regarding the frequency of seeking information
about mental health, there are 57.1% of sometimes, 21.1% of rarely, 14.3% of often. However, it
is still worrying as illustrated with 7.5% of students who self-report the questionnaire, they said
that they had never searched for information related to mental health.

This number can be explained by a university professor in Vietnam who also raised a
worrying situation, that is, there are cases of people who have suffered from mental
health problems for 10 years, then seek help and treatment. Therefore, a lot of people
only seek information when the problems are already serious.
This is an alarming number, and this is one of the dangerous factors leading to anxiety
among students because when faced with stressful situations, it is easy to fall into anxiety. That
worry has a basis because we often pay attention to our physical health and neglect our mental
health. This problem, not only in each student, but even in agencies, units, and families, hardly
or less pay attention to the mental health status of each member. And when each student
encounters "psychological problems", they can only endure and often handle it in an extreme
direction. This would be very dangerous, especially in modern society.
•

Information source
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To know how students find information about mental health, we investigated whether the
choices were possible and found that 53.9% of students looked for Websites, Youtube, and other
social media to answer their troubles. Another group chose Books, Newspapers are the best way
to update information (20.7%). Similarly, the figures illustrated for “Medical centers, hospitals,
professionals” and “From friends, relatives” described a decline compared with the previous
category of around 11.1% and 14.3% respectively.

This also indicates that students have difficulty accessing health services because of the
stigmas still associated with mental health problems. Currently, popularized in the media, mass
information about mental health counseling/consulting services abounds. However, through the
research results, we found that the percentage of students who chose to go to a psychologist, a
psychological counseling call center, or a mental health center was the lowest. This may suggest
the hypothesis that students do not have much time outside of study, so they do not know about
other services of psychological counseling.
•

Reliability of information source

From the preliminary information data level of the survey, with the highest percentage in all four cases
(74%), the group of opinions believes with the content they find through search engines, compared to
about 2.4% slightly untrustful and no data in “untrustful” was recorded. Looking at these

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positive responses we also find that the information they find on their own makes it
easier for students to find and helps them improve and cope with mental health issues.
However, why are students less likely to choose to completely believe when the number is only
recorded about 15.4% of the overall? On the mass media, no matter how abundant it is, it still cannot
satisfy everyone's needed to learn. On the other hand, because it must convey a huge amount and
volume of information, the content still cannot avoid certain errors such as duplicate content,
sometimes contradictory, unconvincing evidence, and encouraging information. report lack of
feasibility …make people inevitably worry, wonder and lack confidence…There is content that gives
very practical advice, but it seems too difficult to follow, uses many technical terms that are difficult to
understand, or sentences with multiple meanings can easily lead to misunderstandings.

•

Definition of “mental health”

The results of the survey on what factors are related to mental health show that up to
112 students suggest that one of the key factors associated with mental health is
“emotional and psychological”. Following closely is the data of the factor "The ability to
deal with stress and difficulties’’ (95 people). The lowest rate reflected in 24.8% of 133
students choosing “Be active and contribute to the community copper”.
Mental health is fundamental to the well-being and productive functioning of individuals.
Mental health is not only the absence of mental disorders but also includes the ability to
think, learn, and understand one's feelings and the reactions of others. Mental health is
a state of balance, both within the body and with the environment. Physical,
psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, and other related factors are all involved in
creating this balance. Therefore, we can see that the data are relatively distributed.

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•

Common diseases

The chart illustrates the proportion of the capacity of knowing some disorder of 133
students (Schizophrenia, Social anxiety disorder, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Obsessive
Compulsive disorder, Bipolar disorder, Depression, and Anxiety disorders.) Overall, most of them
have heard about these disorders, especially Depression and Anxiety Disorder are the most
typical, with 76 and 72 students knowing respectively. Moreover, Obsessive Compulsive disorder

is the third most known, accounting for particularly 69 students. There are around 27 to 51
respondents who know about Post-traumatic stress disorder, Bipolar disorder, Social anxiety
disorder, and Schizophrenia. However, there are only 7 students who do not know about these
disorders. It seems that almost every student has known about these disorders, which shows the
concern of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors about the disorders of mental health.
This is a positive statistic because most respondents have heard about these disorders, even
though these have just been popularized recently. Knowledge about mental disorders can help them
realize the symptoms of these problems. However, there are still some students who do not care
about their psychological health, although there is mass information about these mental confusions.
•

Identifying erroneous beliefs about mental disorders

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A considerable majority of respondents out of 133 students who completed the survey have
agreed with these statements, which are “Mental disorders have the potential to affect the ability
of the brain to function”, “high stress can lead to mental disorders'', and “drinking too much
alcohol and stimulants can cause mental disorders”. The ones whose consideration are “right”
about these above statements account for 125 to 117 people respectively. Those who think these
are “wrong” are relatively few respondents, about 8 to 16 people.

As mentioned in theoretical basis, all 3 statements above are “right” and most of
students know well about these facts.
•

Identifying stereotypes about mental disorders

In general, there are 75% to almost 87% people, who totally and partly disagree about
these three statements, which are “Depression is not a disease. It's just an imagination,
aggravating the problems of the weak”, “only losers have mental disorders”, and “only
adults have mental problems”. Only a few respondents are agreeing. Only a few
respondents are agreeing. concerning these sentences, about 5 to 7 people.
As mentioned in theoretical basis, all 3 statements above are erroneous beliefs about
mental problems. Since most of students disagree with these beliefs, they seem to have
positive attitudes towards mental health.

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PART 2: THE NEED AND FIRST – AID SKILLS WHEN FACING MENTAL PROBLEMS
•

The proximity to people with mental health problems

Concerning the responses of the survey, a clear majority of the survey subjects are people with
“Do not have anyone" and “Friends”, with 45 and 41 students. Moreover, “Inconvenience to
respond” occupied 12%, with 24 people. On the contrary, “Acquaintances” participated in only
11% of the sample, while “Self” and “Close relatives” fluctuated around (21% to 18%).
These results reveal a warning among students when there are a lot of people who are facing mental
problems around them, even themselves, about 92,4%. However, there are 45 respondents who do
not have anyone having negative effects on mental health, which make up the highest figure.
•

Factors that negatively affecting students’ mental health

There are only 17 people among 133 respondents choosing “Others” besides “Studying”, “Jobs
after graduation”, “Health”, and “Relationship”. On the other hand, “Studying” is the option that
most of them choose as a factor affecting their mental health, accounting for 33%. Moreover,
“Relationship” takes up more than 25%, which is more than “Jobs after graduation” 3%. Because
64,7% of 133 respondents are freshmen who have recently changed the environment from high
school to university, the object causing negative effects for most of them is “Studying”. In
contrast, “Health” is the least affected factor besides “Others”, chosen by 48 students.

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First – aid skills when facing mental health crisis

More than half of students prefer to spend their time relaxing, taking care of themselves (103 people),
using the social network to forget about the crisis (specifically 61 students), or sharing with someone
like friends, close relatives when they have a mental crisis (61 people and 56 people respectively).
But there are also a few people who don’t care about the crisis, with 9 people.

It can be easily understood that most of the respondents choose the option “Spending their time
to relax” because “Do things that are good for your body and mind” is one of 9 tips of UNICEF
recommends for people when they are in a stressful situation. Nevertheless, there are still people
who neglect their mental statements although they are in stressful times.

First – aid skills when students’ friends/ relatives facing mental
difficulties

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Overall, people tend to listen, share without prejudice when their friends, relatives, having trouble
with their mental health, with a significant number of students filling in the survey, about 121
people (91%). Furthermore, nearly 31% will advise them to seek professional assistance. Yet
only 8 of 133 people ignore the mental difficulties of their friends, relatives, with 6%.

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This is a positive figure that almost everyone in the survey will be willing to listen to, and
share without prejudice forward to their friends, relatives who are stuck in the crisis.
Conversely, we found that the percentage of students who do not care about those who
are having trouble with mental health is relatively low.
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Mental – health – beneficial habits

There is a slight fluctuation in half of 133 students sometimes doing exercise, yoga or meditation, getting
enough sleep, or eating healthy when they self-evaluate their mental health care habits. On the other hand,
the option that is chosen by 58 people who usually build a solid foundation of social relations to take care
of their mental health is “Building social relationships”. Nevertheless, there are also about 2 to 16
respondents who never take up these above hobbies to manage their mental health.

Assessing the data, we found a wonderful signal that half of the students attending the
survey cared about their mental health, by maintaining good habits like meditating,
sleeping well, or eating healthy, etc. However, there are still few people who consider

mental health unimportant and do not give a chance to take up these habits.
INFERENTIAL DATA
1. Providing a 95% confidence interval for the population mean of mental-healthliteracy score (Scores are calculated as presented in implementation method and theoretical
basis)

Sample mean µ = 12.47
Sample standard deviation s = 3.5
Confidence coefficient (1 - a ) = 95%
=> Level of significance a = 1 - 0.95 = 0.05
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