Investigation of relationship between perceived social support, social maturation, psychological hardiness and mental health of students

The student course is stressful so it’s expected that a percentage of students being exposed to mental diseases. Therefore, indicators of perceived social support, psychological hardiness, and social maturity of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences students were selected and evaluated in this study.

 four questionnaires, including Perceived Multidimensional Social Support Scale, Cobasa Hardiness Scale, Rao Social Maturity Scale, and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), were completed by 164 randomly selected students from the Faculty of Paramedical Sciences in 2017.

 The mean age of the participant students in this study was 20.58±1.52 years old, and 73.8% of them were female, and 26.2% of them were male. The overall mean score of mental health in this study was 22.87±12.65. There was also a significant negative correlation between mental health scores with the results of three other tests, (R= -0.38 for Rao's test, R=- 0.48 for social support test and R=- 0.43 for hardiness with P-value<0.05). This indicates that having a better mental health status leads to high perceived social support, social maturity, and hardiness.

Considering the significant relationship between mental health and the three other measured components in students, it can be said that in one person with high perceived social support, social maturity, and hardiness, mental health is in good status.