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 FINANCEFINAL PROJECT REPORT APPLIED STATISTICS IN ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS Topic: Awareness, need and ability of mental health care of univers

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 Hoàng 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%)

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

I – SUMMARY

Purpose: Mental health literacy or awareness of mental health is a necessity for earlydetection and intervention in mental diseases, and as a result, it has become a research emphasis inrecent decades This study aims to investigate the attitudes towards mental health and assess mentalhealth literacy of students in Hồ Chí Minh universities by identifying knowledge gaps, stereotypesabout mental health problems, and their information-searching behaviors Moreover, it investigateshow 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 HCMuniversities as representatives Respondents were asked to respond to some demographicquestions and questions about mental health including their attitudes, knowledge andperceptions, information-seeking habits, first-aid skills, and self-help strategies

Results: Most of the respondents have heard about “mental health” and take this problemseriously by searching for relevant information sometimes through social media Moreover, theyknew most of the common knowledge about mental health and got a high proportion of questionstesting their awareness correctly They have many types of stress but do not tend to rely onprofessionals Finally, they sometimes do exercise, yoga, and meditation as well as get enoughsleep, 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 being negatively, they tend to resolve it by themselves instead of seeking professional help Inaddition, they seem to take care of themselves properly by doing health-beneficial activities Onthis basis, not only individuals should take an effort in equipping themselves with the necessaryinformation, but governmental and academic institutions should also put more emphasis onraising awareness about mental health

well-II - INTRODUCTION

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 mostbasic 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 anotherequally vital aspect which is mental health This status quo is even worse when today’s society oftenputs 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 3-4times higher than the number of deaths due to traffic accidents, and depression, a kind of mentalillness, 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

Unfortunately, among young people aged 18-25 in Vietnam nowadays, mental health illnessesare widespread and show no sign of decreasing It is estimated that at least 3 million young peopleand adolescents in Vietnam are struggling with psychological problems Although the universityenvironment can provide students with a huge number of opportunities to express and developthemselves, it also brings many challenges for them, who are independent and forced to face real lifefor the first time The mental health problems of university students resulting from this fact can comefrom many different reasons such as academic pressure, financial difficulties, relationships with familymembers and friends as well as expectations from other people, etc A study by Nguyen Huu Thu atHanoi National University in 2009 found that 79% of students suffered mild stress, 3.2% weremoderately stressed and the rest were not stressed.

Mental health problems cause unpredictable consequences, not only for people who aresuffering 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 bypeople, especially university students, who are the future owners of our country This fact leadsstudents to ignore mental health care and not be able to realize whether they have got psychologicalproblems or not, as well as not being able to control the progress of their development It is usuallytoo 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 andability 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 suggestsolutions to prevent suicide, treat mental health disorders and improve the quality of student’s life sothat 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 andproductive 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):

+ Have they ever heard about “mental health”

- A scale (with five points ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree)

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

- A list of options with a single answer possible

Rarely, Sometimes, Regularly)

- A list of options with multiple answers possible:

Distribute the survey and collect responses

- 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 “mentalhealth” is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can copewith the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to contribute tohis or her community” This is also the theoretical basis for forming the questions about factorsrelated to mental health Thereby, we hope to receive people's general views on the concept ofmental health, which is the first basic step to survey the level of their awareness as well as theirneed 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 weneed to assess for early recognition and intervention in mental disorders Some of the most commonmisconceptions 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 havemental 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

behavioural disorders are the result of a complex interaction between biological, psychological, andsocial factors Therefore, they need a clear treatment regimen, just like illnesses related to physicalhealth In addition, mental disorders can affect anyone regardless of their ages, their socioeconomicstatus or how good their life appears at face value This can be proved by the anxiety arising frompressure to succeed of a young person doing well in school or the percentage ranging from 8% to29% 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 encouragespeople of any age to seek support when they need it.

For each disagreement with erroneous belief, respondents will get 1 point of health-literacy score

mental-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 sleepdisorders (41.1%) Therefore, understanding some common mental disorders can help peopledetect them in time and get the right treatment That is also the reason why we put some mentalillnesses 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 symptomsinclude loss of confidence and self-esteem, inappropriate guilt, thoughts of death and suicide,diminished concentration, and disturbance of sleep and appetite Though depressive feelings arecommon, especially after experiencing setbacks in life, depressive disorder is diagnosed only when thesymptoms 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 orearly adulthood It is characterized by fundamental distortions in thinking and perception, and byinappropriate 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

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 disordershave been shown to be associated with disruptions of neural communication within specific circuits Itcan be said that mental disorders are accompanied by abnormal changes in the nervous system, andtherefore 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, childabuse, sexual assault, witnessing violence, etc.): Studies suggest that all significant events in lifeact 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, wehave added two questions in the survey, one related to people's perceptions and thoughts about thecauses and consequences of mental disorders (1 Mental disorders have the potential to affect theability of the brain to function/ 2 High levels of stress can lead to mental disorders/ 3 Overuse ofalcohol and stimulants can cause mental disorders), while the remaining question aims to investigatethe 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 healthissues such as depression and anxiety would increase happiness by 20%, whereas eliminatingpoverty would increase happiness by only 5% In other words, the relationship between mentalhealth 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:

- 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 anxietyalone cost the global economy approximately one trillion dollars annually due to lost productivity Nothaving a good state of mental health will make us lose the ability to endure, handle work pressure aswell 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.

• 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-helpstrategies, 2 more questions about how students respond when they have a mental disorder aswell 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 populationmean of mental health literacy score, quantify the difference between male and female mental

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

The pie chart gives information about the gender that took part in the survey As is observed from thegraph, most of the respondents are female (95 people, accounting for 71,4% of the total), the rest aremale (38 people, accounting for 28,6% of the total), compared to a total of 100 survey subjects It isnoticeable 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 year 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%.

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

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 haverelatively high attention to the importance of mental health In each of these students’ schoolyears, the Freshman students rated for “very important” more than Sophomore students, Juniorstudents, and Senior students combined

This is understandable because today's society develops, people not only focus on takingcare of their physical health but also care about the spiritual side Therefore, it is impactful forstudents to learn about mental health in general on their own in the media, thereby helpingstudents to cope with and prevent stress from occurring in their life

• Benefits of taking care of mental health

If we look at the Pareto graph as a whole, nearly 20% of the total number of studentsparticipating in the survey agreed that the benefit of mental health care is "Ensure workefficiency" (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 ahappier life", with an overwhelming percentage (68.4%), the opposite was true for only onestudent choosing “No benefits” (approximately 0.8%).

It can be explained that a study by UNICEF in Vietnam published in 2017 showed thatabout 30% of the burden of non-communicable diseases is due to mental health disorders Afocus on mental health has the potential to generate more personal, social, and economicbenefits than intervention at any point in time This shows that timely psychological support andcounseling 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 informationabout 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 saidthat 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 anxietyamong students because when faced with stressful situations, it is easy to fall into anxiety Thatworry has a basis because we often pay attention to our physical health and neglect our mentalhealth 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 studentencounters "psychological problems", they can only endure and often handle it in an extremedirection This would be very dangerous, especially in modern society

To know how students find information about mental health, we investigated whether thechoices were possible and found that 53.9% of students looked for Websites, Youtube, and othersocial 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 previouscategory of around 11.1% and 14.3% respectively

This also indicates that students have difficulty accessing health services because of thestigmas still associated with mental health problems Currently, popularized in the media, massinformation about mental health counseling/consulting services abounds However, through theresearch results, we found that the percentage of students who chose to go to a psychologist, apsychological counseling call center, or a mental health center was the lowest This may suggestthe hypothesis that students do not have much time outside of study, so they do not know aboutother 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 toabout 2.4% slightly untrustful and no data in “untrustful” was recorded Looking at these