College Students’ Mental Health Among Different Racial/Ethnic Groups

The mental health of college and university students is a vital component of their academic and personal development. This study examines the mental health of college students from various ethnic backgrounds, with a particular focus on Asian international students in U.S. universities, post-pandemic, as they faced difficulties such as distance from home, cultural differences, language barriers, and connectedness to family and friends. In this study, we recruited 32 college-level participants, 25 of whom were Asian or Asian American. Every participant completed two scales, the PERMA-Profiler, which measures overall well-being, and the Mental Health Quality of Life Questionnaire (MHQoL), which assesses mental health quality of life, as well as demographic questions. We found that the higher scores on the PERMA-Profiler were significantly correlated with better mental health in MHQoL. As expected, the mental health scores were affected by the connectedness to family and friends, which was shown by significant differences in PERMA scale but not in MHQoL scale. There was not enough evidence to support our hypothesis that Asian international students would reveal more negative mental health than students from other ethnic backgrounds, for both the PERMA and MHQoL scale. We discuss the implications of our findings, and recommend future directions to include larger sample sizes.