Mental health of UK university business students: Relationship with shame, motivation and self-compassion

Abstract

There is growing awareness of mental health problems among UK business students, which appears to be exacerbated by students’ attitudes of shame toward mental health. This study recruited 138 UK business students and examined the relationship between mental health and shame, and mental health and potential protective factors such as self-compassion and motivation. A significant correlation between each of the constructs was observed and self-compassion was identified as an explanatory variable for mental health. Shame moderated the relationship between self-compassion and mental health. Integrating self-compassion training into business study programs may help to improve the mental health of this student group.

Keywords:

• Academic motivation
• mental health attitudes
• mental health
• self-compassion
• UK business students

Acknowledgments

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (University of Derby, United Kingdom) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients prior to being included in the study.

Disclosure statement

Yasuhiro Kotera, Elaine Conway and William Van Gordon declare that they have no conflict of interest.