Irrational beliefs, depression, anxiety, and stress among university students in Hong Kong

Abstract

Academic stress, depression, and anxiety among university students has been a great concern globally. Literature review shows that university students may harbor irrational beliefs that could play a significant role in causing emotional disturbances. Objective: The aims of this study were to examine the relationship of irrational beliefs with emotional disturbances in university students, and the differences in irrational beliefs and depression, anxiety, and stress between students with different socio-demographic and academic backgrounds. Participants and method: Data was collected from 655 local Hong Kong university students. Results and conclusions: University students having higher levels of irrational beliefs were more likely to have depression, anxiety, and stress. Two-way MANOVA results showed that second-year students had more awfulizing beliefs than third-year students in the faculties of Engineering and Education. Results of ANOVA and the Independent Sample t-test revealed that male students, students from low income families, Law students, those pursuing 5-year programs, or those in the second year of study were likely to have more irrational beliefs. In addition, male students, medical students, those studying 5-year programs were found having significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Limitations and implications were discussed.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• depression
• irrational beliefs
• stress
• university students

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of Hong Kong SAR and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the University of Hong Kong.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.