Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences EMSS 2023

Volume 23 (2023)

Exploring the Factors Affecting the Mental Health of College

Students
Junru Chen *
Department of Finance and Accounting, Qilu University of Technology, Jinan, 250300, China
* Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]
Abstract. In recent years, the topic of mental health has become a very sensitive and heated topic
on campus, and a person's psychological changes are subtle, people’s mood is easy to receive the
influence of various things and personal relationships around. Although there have been many
experts and investigations into the causes of negative emotions, the study is not broad and
connected, so this study takes into account the impact of employment and family dual ingredients
on the psychological condition of university students, as well as explore the lack of tools for students
to promote mental health, and in this regard make some suggestions to improve mental health
problems. Three of the most widespread elements impacting the mental condition of college students
are summarized and analyzed. The study found that while problems relating to employment and the
family are more common causes of disturbance and unhappiness for college students, they have
received attention from both the state and parents, and the situation is slowly improving. Through
the study of the lack of physical exercise, three main factors have been identified: workload,
companion and family. Since physical exercise is timely and personal, a revision has been proposed
to the present situation.
Keywords: Mental health; employment; family; physical exercise.

1. Introduction
People are living in an age of globalization, a society that is changing rapidly, and to survive in a
rapidly evolving society, they must constantly work and learn to keep up with the pace of the times.
In recent years, employment issues, the burden of work and learning tasks, and the enormous
responsibilities of the family have put varying degrees of pressure on society and families, and people
have to bear these pressures to improve their social competitiveness in the face of pressures from all
sides. However, the lack of time and means to get rid of negative emotions while suffering a great
deal of pressure poses a serious threat to mental health institutions. This phenomenon also exists in
college students, and the situation is unoptimistic. Studies have shown that between 20% and 40% of
college students suffer from varying degrees of negative emotions such as depression, anxiety, and
stress, and the anxiety that college students suffered in the first three years of college has gone beyond
normal [1]. However, the closer they get to graduation, the more college students think about their
post-graduation, which leads to higher levels of employment anxiety [2]. While the levels of anxiety
experienced by college students vary from one stage to another, each stage has an adverse impact on
their mental health. University students face multiple stresses in reality that threaten their academic
and physiological and psychological functions [3]. The former also had a lot of research on the causes
that will have a negative impact on the mental state of college students, but the point of investigation
was more specific, lack of broadness and targeting. Therefore, this article will be based on previous
people's studies to further explore what reality is attracted to the psychological shift of most college
students to unhealthy and makes feasible suggestions for the influences that have been explored.
Many studies have previously explored ways to alleviate negative emotions in college students, such
as studies showing that short-term AOP (adventure-based outdoor programs) provide students with
an opportunity to escape from everyday arduous tasks, at the same time, it can reduce their
psychentonia and provide opportunities to temporarily relieve their physical stress levels [4].
However, AOP is not applicable to all college students, so, in combination with the theoretical
research of the predecessor, finding a less restrictive way to eliminate negative emotions from college

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students is something that needs to be focused on in this paper. By summarizing the literature, it can
be found that employment problems, lack of physical exercise and family factors are the huge threat
to the mental state of college students [5-8], and this paper is further analyzed and extended on the
basis of these three factors.

2. Factors that Threaten the Mental Health of College Students

2.1. Impact
The psychological health of college students is influenced by many factors. This article will look
at the three most representative aspects: employment stress, lack of physical exercise and family
environment.
2.1.1. Employment stress
Employment is a livelihood issue of widespread public attention. According to the National Bureau
of Statistics, a nationwide survey of urban residents found that the unemployment rate stood at 5.3
percent for the six months from January to June, down 0.4 percent from the previous year. While
employment is a national priority and a problem that is addressed as best as possible, according to the
Ministry of Education's forecast data, the number of college graduates in 2023 is about 11.58 million,
an increase of 820,000 compared with last year, once again refreshing the record of the "most difficult
employment season in history". The number of university graduates will rise again, which means that
there will be a further increase in the number of socially-employed persons, and that the competitive
pressure on employment will increase. Facing the current situation of fierce competition for
employment, the biggest source of pressure for undergraduates is the employment problem related to
their personal future [5]. In particular, college students who are about to graduate have a higher level
of employment anxiety [2]. Employment anxiety in pre-graduate college students is mainly affected
by the three aspects of employment awareness, employability, and employment preparedness. The
higher the levels of the above three, the lower the level of employment anxiety, and the higher the
employment stress and depression, the more serious the employment confusion [9]. If they are in this
kind of anxiety and irritability for a long time, it will have a bad effect on their psychological status,
and even lead to the occurrence of extreme events. At the same time, employment anxiety will
aggravate the fear of employment of college students, which is detrimental to their future life
development [10].
2.1.2. Lack of physical exercise
There is no doubt that physical exercise has a lot of benefits for people. For example, physical
exercise can build a strong body. At the same time, physical exercise has also improved the bad state
of mind. Participating in sports is good for students’ mental health and can relief students’ anxiety
and depression to let them show fewer emotion disorders [11]. The charm,openness and competition
of exercise will bring happiness to college students, because these features can improve students'
interpersonal communication skills as well as help them master their emotion and improve their
mental frustration, which have positive effect on college students’ mental health [12]. According to
the research, while high and low-intensity sports can improve physical and mental health to some
extent, moderate intensity sports are best suited. Chinese and foreign research has endorsed that
moderate intensity physical sports is a value threshold, and moderate intensity physical sports has a
good effect on improving sports performance and maintaining mental health [13]. But surveys and
studies have found that many students do not strictly adhere to the school's extra-curricular exercise
regimes, and they are busy with other things in their out-of-school hours, which leads to not getting
effective exercise [6]. In 2016, a survey conducted by the Centre for the Social Survey of the Chinese
Journal of Youth through the questionnaire network of 2001 surveyed university students showed
that a quarter of the surveyed college students exercise less than once a week, and 60.0% of the
college students surveyed say that they do not exercise because of laziness [14].Thus, while physical

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exercise is beneficial to the mental health of college students, a large proportion of university students
occupy the time of exercise because of their laziness or other things, which leads to the inability to
improve their mental health.
2.1.3. Family environment
The family is a very important environment for children's growth, and the family environment
plays a significant role in students' mental health. Studies show that children who experience more
emotional warmth and less negative educational patterns during their growth are more likely to form
and develop mediocre thoughts to protect themselves from negative emotions [15]. In recent years,
children's education has been paid attention to by parents, and more and more people are aware that
good education should be given to their children at an early age. However, in order to support the
economic burden of the family, many parents still have to leave home to work when their children
are young, so that their children lack the companionship of parents. Studies show that the level of
mental health of college students is significantly affected by the three experiences of absence,
mobility and single-parenthood, the mental health level of students with these experiences is
significantly lower than that of non-single parent students. It can be seen that lack of parental
companionship in childhood will have a great impact on college students' mental health [7]. In
addition to the lack of parental companionship, parents' negative parenting style also poses a threat
to college students' mental health, among which parents' overprotection is more significant than
parents' rejection [8]. Parents sometimes reject a child's request, although this behavior is sometimes
beneficial to children’s psychological health. [8]. However, the psychology of college students is also
greatly affected by bad parent-child relationships, mainly including interference parent and child
relationships, and rejection parent relationships [16]. Interference-type personal relations refers to the
excessive involvement of parents in the child's learning and life, resulting in hostility and reversal;
rejection-typical parent-child relations reflect the parents' disagreement with the choice of the child,
causing the child to be frustrated repeatedly, to lose self-confidence, and to be easily capitalized. It
can be seen that the family environment is an important factor that needs to be taken into account
when considering the psychological problems of university students, which mainly include: the
parents' way of upbringing, accompaniment time and relationships with children.
2.2. Discussion
Employment has always been a national concern, but employment is a long-running campaign that
needs continuous adjustment and improvement. For families, the situation is different for each family,
this means that the psychological condition of college students is influenced by different family
factors. But exercise is different from the previous two factors, the psychological problems of college
students can be improved well through short-term physical exercise, and the research of the influence
of college student physical exercise is also more, so this discussion is based on the research of the
predecessor, to further explore and develop related solutions to the factors affecting college students’
physical exercise.
2.2.1. Factors that affect college students' physical exercise
According to the research, physical exercise is good for college students' physical and mental
health, but most students do not get effective exercise. According to a survey of the top ten
universities in Guangzhou University City, whether or not college students engage in physical
exercise is mainly influenced by both academic tasks and training companions [17]. The following is
an exploration of the impact of academic, companions and family factors on the exercise of college
students.
After entering the university, both the learning mode and the content of learning have changed
overwhelmingly, students need to learn a lot of professional knowledge, they have a large number of
learning tasks which also bring them a great deal of learning pressure. However, exercise is an
important way to get rid of stress. According to this logic, college students should actively take
physical exercise to relieve the pressure, but the fact is that the academic task has become a major

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obstacle to college students' physical exercise. Chen Xiaoping found that both boys and girls were
the most likely to rank “professional learning, self-training” in the arrangement of spare time among
the different sexes of university students [18].
The partner is very important in the exercise process. Firstly, the partner can supervise and
accompany each other to stick to exercise. Secondly, there are a lot of sports that require a lot of
people to work together, for example, ball games. Finally, if someone is accompanied during the
exercise, it will add a lot of fun to exercise, such as climbing mountains. The climbers can share their
pleasures together and enhance the momentum of exercise. College students spend most of their time
at school, and the people they have the most contact with are their classmates. Studies have shown
that the influence of classmates is a key factor that directly affects the ability of our students to
develop good exercise habits [19]. In a survey of college students who take part in the main form of
physical exercise, Zhang Vintao found that 60.6% of college college students with a physical habit
were with their peers [20]. Therefore, the lack of sports partners for college students is an important
factor hindering their physical exercise.
Apart from the school, the family is the longest place for college students to live, and the sporting
atmosphere of a family has a great influence on college students' sport concepts. According to Zhang
Wentao's research, although parents' support has no significant impact on college students' exercise
habits, college students' physical habits are influenced by the frequency of their parents' exercises.
The parents of college students who would have exercising habits had more regular exercise than the
parents of university students who did not exercise habits [20]. It can be seen that college students'
physical habits are affected by their parents' physical behavior, but after the survey, today's family
movements are not optimistic, family members use holidays and other leisure time to exercise for less
than 19% of the surveyed population, and parents regularly exercise with their children, accounted
for a proportion of less than 15% of the population surveyed [21]. Therefore, the lack of family sports
atmosphere is an important factor in the lack of physical exercise of college students.
2.2.2. Strategies to promote exercise
In order to address academic workload, universities change college students' thinking concepts
through propaganda and education. In the traditional cognition of students, it is believed that taking
up the time of physical exercise can have more sufficient time to complete their studies. However,
studies have shown that sports can improve students' cognitive ability and academic performance by
positively affecting brain structure function, epigenetic regulation of brain tissue,cerebral cortex
activity pattern and learning-related psychological factors [11]. Therefore, it is necessary to convey
this rational concept to college students, so that they can realize the relationship between physical
exercise and study, and they can reasonably plan the time of exercise and study.
To solve the problem of the lack of exercise partners, universities can actively organize sports
exercises, create associations, divide sports groups with free groups as a prerequisite, and take card
games to encourage college students to join the movement, in order to ensure that college students
develop the habit of good sports exercise.
The attitude and behavior of parents to participate in sports exercises is significantly correlated
with that of college students. The clearer the attitude of parents, the clearer will be their children's
attitude to sports exercise, and the more times parents participate, the higher will be the stage of their
child's exercise behaviour [21]. Therefore, universities and communities should convey this concept
of parental influence on children to parents and call on parents to actively participate in sports
themselves and participate in physical exercise with their children.
The purpose of physical exercise is the drive for students to participate in exercise. The stronger
the purpose of participating in exercise, the more spontaneous physical exercise students can do [22].
Therefore, it is possible to develop a variety of sports projects that are suitable for students' sporting
purposes, taking advantage of the needs of university students, so that they automatically participate
in physical exercise.

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3. Conclusion
This article mainly explores the impact of the three factors on the mental health of college students:
employment stress, lack of exercise, and family environment. At present, although the employment
environment is improving, employment competition is still very intense, and the intense competition
undoubtedly puts great pressure on college students. This unfavorable factor has a very negative
impact on the mental health of college students. It is well known that physical exercise is good for
people's physical and mental development, but statistics show that a large proportion of college
students lack physical exercise, which does not improve their mental health. In the face of this
situation, exploring the factors that influenced the exercise of college students is important, through
the search of studies, influence factors mainly include three reasons: academic overload, no
companions and insufficient family sporting atmosphere. Family environment also has a great impact
on college students' mental health, which is mainly reflected between parents and children. Childhood
lack of parental accompaniment, negative parental patterns and poor parent-child relationships are
not conducive to the development of the mental health of college students. Those three factors are the
three most prominent influence factors in the previous study, but there are many other factors that
may have an impact on the mental health of college students, and solutions to the adverse impact of
employment stress and family environment on college students' psychology are still worth exploring.

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