PANDEMIC EMOTIONAL IMPACT, RESILIENCE, STIGMA, HELP-SEEKING, AND MENTAL HEALTH CONDITION OF COLLEGE STUDENTS: A PATH ANALYSIS
Few and fragmented correlation studies were done on Filipino college students’ mental health, help-seeking, resilience, stigma, and how they were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to identify the causal relationships among Filipino college students’ resilience, the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, help-seeking intention, help-seeking behavior, self-stigma, perception of stigmatization by others for seeking help, to mental health condition using path analysis. Total participants were 962 college students, composed of 778 females and 184 males. Results showed 70.3% moderate to extreme pandemic emotional impact, 69.3% neutral resilience, 56.8% some to a great deal on perception of stigmatization by others for seeking help, 68.5% moderate self-stigma for seeking help, 57.8% somewhat unlikely to extremely unlikely having intention in help-seeking intention, 64.3% low actual help-seeking, and 51.4% moderate to severe mental health condition. The path analysis showed pandemic emotional impact predicted a moderate to a severe mental health condition and some to a great deal on the perception of stigmatization by others for seeking help. Resiliency predicted a moderate to severe mental health condition and inversely some to a great deal on the perception of stigmatization by others for seeking help including moderate self-stigma. A neutral actual help-seeking predicted a moderate to severe mental health condition. Perception of stigmatization by others for seeking help mediated pandemic emotional impact on the mental health condition. This proves that Filipino college students have silently suffered from mental health condition. Moreover, it is recommended that proactive and collaborative efforts of students, faculty, higher education’s student affairs office, mental health professionals, and government line agencies should target the stakeholders’ resiliency, and social stigma which may significantly improve Filipino college students’ actual help-seeking behavior and mental health.
Keywords: Pandemic Emotional Impact, Resiliency, Help-Seeking, Stigma, Mental Health Condition, Path Analysis.
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