Search Results (1,013)

Background and Objectives: Cervicogenic headaches (CGH) are increasingly common among college students and may negatively affect academic performance and sleep quality. This study aimed to identify the self-reported prevalence of cervicogenic-type head and neck pain in a convenience sample of Saudi college students and to examine its associations with electronic device use, physical activity, and sleep quality among college students in Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 313 college students from various Saudi university colleges using an online self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire gathered information on sociodemographic characteristics, electronic device usage, neck pain awareness, physical activity levels, and sleep quality. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data, and chi-square tests were used to explore associations between potential predictors and the prevalence of self-reported cervicogenic-type head and neck pain consistent with possible CGH. Results: Most participants were female (84.3%) and aged 18–25 years (95.2%). Cervicogenic-type head and neck pain were reported by 65.2% (n = 204/313), while 56.5% experienced moderate to severe stress. A significant association was found with perceived stress (p = 0.002). Prolonged electronic device use (>4 h/day: 77.9%; p < 0.01), lower physical activity (p = 0.056), medication use (p < 0.01), headache exacerbation with inactivity (p = 0.006), and poor sleep quality (95.1% with PSQI > 10; p = 0.044) were significantly associated. Conclusions: These findings highlight associations between excessive electronic device use, low physical activity, and poor sleep quality with self-reported cervicogenic-type head and neck pain among Saudi college students. Future longitudinal studies and randomized controlled trials are needed to determine whether targeting these factors reduces the prevalence of CGH. Full article

Academic stress is widely related to student engagement, yet its multidimensional nature and underlying processes remain insufficiently examined in laboratory learning contexts. This study explored the relationship between different sources of academic stress and academic engagement in chemistry laboratory courses, with learning burnout as a potential mediator. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1647 undergraduate school students. Academic stress was conceptualized as three dimensions: students’ academic self-perceptions (SP), faculty work and examinations (WE), and academic expectations (AExp). The results showed that these stress dimensions were differentially related to academic engagement. In addition, learning burnout was found to be associated with the relationship between academic stress and engagement, suggesting a mediating role. Notably, workload-related stress was more strongly related to engagement, whereas expectation-related stress showed a stronger association with burnout. These findings suggest that academic stress is not a unitary construct and that different stress sources may be associated with engagement through distinct patterns. The results provide a basis for understanding how stress operates in laboratory learning contexts and offer implications for both research and instructional practice. Full article

University professors’ emotional competencies are increasingly discussed as relevant dimensions of teaching professionalism that may shape students’ academic engagement, motivation, and psychological well-being. This qualitative study explores how university students perceive professors’ emotional and relational practices and how students perceived these practices as shaping their academic experience. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with undergraduate and master’s students at an Italian university and analyzed through thematic analysis. Five interconnected themes were identified: (1) empathy and the humanization of the professor–student relationship; (2) relational and communicative styles shaping classroom climate and motivation; (3) emotional regulation in high-stress academic situations, particularly examinations; (4) perceived differences across teaching modalities and disciplinary contexts; (5) students’ expectations regarding balanced emotional openness and faculty development. Students described empathetic, approachable, and emotionally regulated professors as helping to reduce stress, strengthen academic confidence, foster engagement, and support a sense of belonging. Conversely, rigid, distant, or humiliating interactions were associated with anxiety, withdrawal, and disengagement. Rather than treating emotional competence as an individual disposition, the study proposes that it should be understood as a professional and institutional dimension of university teaching. It further develops the notion of student-perceived academic psychological safety as a relational mechanism through which professors’ emotional competencies may influence students’ well-being and participation. The findings highlight the need for faculty development initiatives and institutional policies that recognize the emotional and relational dimensions of teaching as integral to higher education quality. Full article

Background: Armed conflict and geopolitical instability increasingly affect mental health beyond directly exposed populations through continuous media exposure and digital information dissemination. Nursing students may be particularly vulnerable because of high academic demands, emotional sensitivity to human suffering, and intensive engagement with social media and online news platforms. This study examined the association between conflict related news exposure and depression, anxiety, and stress among nursing students in Saudi Arabia during the February 2026 regional military escalation involving Iran, and explored the role of perceived safety concern and the potential indirect associations involving sleep difficulty and study disruption. Methods: A multi-center cross sectional study was conducted among nursing students from different public universities across five regions of Saudi Arabia. Psychological distress was assessed using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale. A composite conflict exposure index was developed from conflict news following frequency and exposure intensity measures. We used Gamma generalized linear models, interaction analyses, and structural equation modeling to evaluate associations, moderation by information source, and mediation pathways. Results were reported as arithmetic mean ratios (AMRs) with 95% confidence intervals, representing the relative change in mean psychological distress scores associated with each predictor. Models were adjusted for sociodemographic, academic, and living-related factors. Results: A total of 247 nursing students were included. Moderate to severe depression, anxiety, and stress were reported by 50.2%, 59.9%, and 32.4% of participants, respectively. Our findings showed that higher conflict exposure was associated with increased stress levels (AMR = 1.17, 95% CI: 1.02–1.34), while associations with depression (AMR = 1.14, 95% CI: 0.99–1.30) and anxiety (AMR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.99–1.28) were weaker. Associations between conflict-related exposure and depression, anxiety, and stress were substantially attenuated after accounting for perceived safety concern, which remained strongly associated with all psychological distress outcomes (AMR = 1.32, 95% CI: 1.19–1.47), anxiety (AMR = 1.31, 95% CI: 1.18–1.44), and stress (AMR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.24–1.51). Compared with television news users, students relying on online news demonstrated substantially higher depression (AMR = 1.92, 95% CI: 1.32–2.78), anxiety (AMR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.29–2.64), and stress scores (AMR = 1.88, 95% CI: 1.29–2.74). Structural equation modeling identified significant indirect associations involving sleep difficulty and study disruption, whereas direct associations between exposure and psychological distress were comparatively weak. Conclusions: Conflict-related media exposure was associated with poorer mental health among nursing students, with perceived insecurity, sleep difficulties, and study disruption showing strong associations with psychological distress and patterns consistent with indirect relationships. Universities and nursing education programs should consider implementing mental health support, media literacy interventions, sleep health promotion, and psychosocial support strategies during periods of regional geopolitical instability. Full article

Introduction: Dietary habits adopted during young adulthood play a critical role in physical, emotional, and cognitive health. University students represent a particularly vulnerable group due to academic stress, lifestyle transitions, and increased autonomy, factors that may influence eating behaviors, body weight perception, and psychological well-being. This study aims to examine dietary habits among students and their associations with self-perceived body weight, lifestyle characteristics, and psychological factors within a biopsychosocial framework. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted using a structured, self-administered online questionnaire distributed to university students aged 18–30 years in Romania. The questionnaire assessed dietary habits, nutritional knowledge, lifestyle behaviors, and psychological variables, including perceived stress and body weight perception. Body mass index was calculated based on self-reported anthropometric data. Results: The findings indicated substantial variability in dietary behaviors, with a high prevalence of irregular meal patterns, frequent snacking, and engagement in weight-control practices. Irregular meal patterns were reported by approximately 62% of participants, while 47% had engaged in at least one weight-loss diet. Discrepancies between self-reported BMI and perceived body weight were observed in roughly 38% of cases, and 83% of respondents reported at least one psychological symptom (stress, anxiety, or low mood) related to eating behaviors. A positive correlation was observed between sleep duration and perceived rest quality (r = 0.364, p < 0.001). High frequencies of caffeinated beverage consumption were also observed. Additionally, 204 participants reported no alcohol consumption, while the variety of alcoholic beverages consumed was strongly correlated with alcohol intake frequency (r = 0.734, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Dietary habits among university students are closely interconnected with body weight perception, lifestyle behaviors, and psychological well-being. These findings emphasize the need for integrative health promotion strategies that address nutrition, emotional regulation, and lifestyle balance to support mental and cognitive health during young adulthood. Full article

Student mental health and academic stress are increasingly addressed through digital monitoring, yet evidence for personalized physiological thresholds based on exhaled VOCs, their in-the-wild feasibility, and their trigger–experience correspondence in everyday student life remains limited. This study examines whether exhaled breath signals can support personalized, real-world stress monitoring in university students using a two-stage design that moves from laboratory calibration to daily life validation. A total of 24 university students took part in the laboratory phase (Study 1; N = 24). Under two stress tasks, a social-conflict video task and a Stroop task, we derived an individualized breath-trigger threshold (θ_i) for each participant. We then invited 21 of them to join a three-day field deployment (Study 2; N = 21). Each participant’s θ_i from Study 1 was used directly as the trigger threshold for daily monitoring in order to test the association between trigger events and subjectively noticeable emotional deviations and to assess preliminary trigger–experience correspondence in daily life. The results show that 78.6% of paired trigger–EMA records were rated as subjectively salient, with 93.9% of these rated at medium-to-high intensity. These events occurred most frequently during study/work activities (60.6%), in dorm/home settings (57.6%), and when participants were alone (63.6%), suggesting that the triggers captured personally meaningful emotional episodes embedded in routine academic life rather than random physiological fluctuations. Overall, this study presents a portable breath-based emotion sampling device for student academic contexts and a reproducible protocol that combines laboratory thresholding with daily life validation. The findings provide preliminary and exploratory indications of the feasibility and within-person transferability of VOC-based emotion detection in students, and offer methodological support for future digital emotion monitoring and intervention design based on breath signals. Full article

Background/Objectives: Mental health challenges among university students represent a growing public health concern, underscoring the need to understand how psychological resources shape students’ responses to academic stress. Grounded in the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) framework, this study examined how academic demands (time pressure, college life stress, and social comparison) and a key resource (social support) relate to academic burnout and whether these relationships are moderated by self-compassion. Methods: Participants were 323 Korean undergraduates, including 187 traditional students and 136 adult learners. A moderated moderation analysis was conducted using PROCESS Model 3 to examine the interactive effects of learner type, self-compassion, and academic demands/resources on academic burnout. Results: College life stress and social comparison showed robust positive associations with academic burnout, whereas time pressure showed a weaker association. Social support was not directly associated with lower burnout; instead, its protective role emerged only at moderate to high levels of self-compassion. Self-compassion also demonstrated a differentiated moderating effect across learner groups. Among traditional students, higher self-compassion weakened the association between social comparison and burnout. Among adult learners, the relationship between social support and burnout varied according to levels of self-compassion. Conclusions: Self-compassion emerged as a developmentally relevant personal resource associated with differences in how academic demands and resources relate to burnout. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of external resources may depend on individuals’ capacity to interpret and utilize them, highlighting the importance of self-compassion in both theoretical models of academic burnout and targeted mental health interventions in higher education. Full article

Background: University students experience increased psychological distress during academic transitions, yet modifiable lifestyle determinants of their subjective well-being remain incompletely understood within integrated analytical frameworks. Methods: A cross-sectional survey (N = 194 undergraduates; 52.6% women; M age = 21.9 years) used validated instruments: the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), Body Appreciation Scale-2 Short Form (BAS-2SF), Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form (IPAQ-SF), and single-item measures of financial security and screen time. Physical activity (PA) was log-transformed (MET_log). Multiple simultaneous regression and structural equation modelling (SEM) were conducted. Results: Perceived stress was the strongest negative predictor of life satisfaction (B = −0.561, p < 0.001), while financial security was a significant positive predictor (B = +0.171, p = 0.023). SEM showed that body appreciation was associated with life satisfaction primarily through lower perceived stress (indirect effect = 0.107; consistent with indirect-only association pattern), while PA showed a significant direct association with life satisfaction (β = +0.143, p = 0.030), independent of the stress pathway. The indirect effect of PA via stress was not significant in the SEM. Model fit was acceptable (CFI = 0.951; RMSEA = 0.067). Conclusions: Perceived stress was statistically associated with the relationship between body appreciation and subjective well-being, while PA showed a direct statistical association with well-being that was independent of the stress pathway. Given the cross-sectional nature of this study, these findings suggest that university health promotion programmes may consider integrating positive body image and stress management components alongside PA promotion to support student psychological well-being. Full article

This study aimed to develop and internally validate a predictive model of perceived stress among first-year military male students to examine the predictive contribution of personality traits, depressive symptoms, and psychological well-being. Understanding these psychological predictors may support interventions for students at elevated risk of stress during military and academic transition. A cross-sectional web-based survey included 274 first-year male students at the Military Technological College in Oman. Outcome measures included the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for depressive symptoms, the WHO-5 Well-being Index, and the Big Five Inventory assessing personality traits. All variables were analyzed as continuous measures. Predictive modeling was performed using Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) linear regression with repeated 70/30 train–test splitting across 100 iterations and 10-fold cross-validation for internal validation. The final analytic sample included 266 participants after exclusion of incomplete responses. Across the 100 internal validation runs, the LASSO model accounted for approximately 40% of the variance in perceived stress (training R² = 0.44 ± 0.04; test R² = 0.40 ± 0.08). Neuroticism (β = 0.35) and depressive symptoms (β = 0.15) showed positive associations with perceived stress, whereas psychological well-being showed a negative association (β = −0.32). PHQ-9, WHO-5, and neuroticism were selected in 100% of the repeated LASSO models, which showed the most stable predictive contribution. Model performance on the test datasets showed stable predictive accuracy (MSE = 20.24 ± 2.48; RMSE = 4.49 ± 0.28; MAE = 3.61 ± 0.23). These findings demonstrate that personality traits, depressive symptoms, and psychological well-being collectively contribute to the statistical modeling of perceived stress among military students. The internally validated associative model may support institutional interventions for students vulnerable to elevated stress, informing targeted preventive mental health strategies within military training environments. Full article

Background: Mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and stress are increasingly prevalent among university students and contribute to long-term cardio-cerebrovascular disease (CCVD) risk. However, limited research has examined the interplay between mental health, CCVD risk factors, and religiosity/spirituality within Southeast Asia’s multicultural context. Methods: This cross-sectional study investigated these relationships among 484 undergraduate students enrolled in medical and health sciences programs across Peninsular Malaysia. Mental health status was assessed using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Self-reported clinical indicators associated with early CCVD vulnerability were also assessed. Religiosity and spirituality were measured using the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL), Brief Religious Coping (RCOPE), Spirituality Scale (SS), and Spiritual Coping Questionnaire (SCQ). Results: High prevalence rates of severe anxiety (50.4%), depression (29.3%), and stress (21.1%) were observed, with significant associations across ethnicity, religion, and academic programs. Higher religiosity and spirituality were generally associated with better mental health outcomes. However, coping style emerged as a key modifier of the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and mental health outcomes, with negative religious coping associated with greater psychological distress, whereas positive coping demonstrated mixed associations and partial mediating effects. Students with poorer mental health also exhibited higher CCVD risk burden. Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of culturally and spiritually sensitive strategies in promoting student well-being. Full article

Occupational mental-health risk in knowledge-work settings is an important public-health and psychosocial-support concern because workload demands, career insecurity, limited mentoring, uneven institutional support and barriers to care can increase psychological risk, including in early-career academic environments. Workplace well-being assessments rely on aggregate survey summaries or conventional prediction models, limiting calibration, interpretability, subgroup evaluation and transfer validation. This study develops a computational-intelligence framework for public mental-health decision support using heterogeneous workplace survey data with early-career academics treated as a motivating knowledge-work context rather than as the direct empirical cohort. The proposed approach combines attention-based tabular learning, variational autoencoder latent profiling, stacked ensemble prediction, probability calibration, feature attribution, perturbation analysis, fairness assessment and cross-dataset adaptation. Calibrated probabilities are converted into a transparent 0–100 risk index to support preventive outreach, psychosocial-support planning and resource-allocation decisions. The model is compared with baselines, including logistic regression, support vector machine, random forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost, TabNet, FT–Transformer, NODE and DCN. Results show strong held-out performance with AUC = 0.885, average precision = 0.872, F1 = 0.808, Brier score = 0.145 and expected calibration error = 0.022, outperforming tested baselines. Five-fold robustness analysis produced a conservative mean test AUC of $0.809\pm 0.044$, indicating moderate partition sensitivity. Key predictors include work interference, perceived stress, care access and support variables. Latent profiling identifies two behavioural subgroups with distinct risk patterns. After feature harmonization, target-domain adaptation and recalibration, external evaluation on an occupational burnout dataset achieves AUC = 0.941 and average precision = 0.936, supporting calibrated, interpretable and subgroup-aware decision support under dataset shift. Full article

Driven by the Confucian cultural ideal of “wang zi cheng long”—the fervent hope that one’s child will rise like a dragon (i.e., achieve extraordinary success)—Chinese parents commonly engage in intensive academic involvement, such as frequent homework checking. However, the mechanisms through which this high-intensity monitoring affects adolescent mental health, and whether its effects are culturally specific, remain underexplored. Drawing upon the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) theory and the stress process model, this study used data from the 2022 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) on 1831 adolescents aged 9–15 to examine the impact of parental homework checking frequency on adolescent loneliness, the mediating role of academic pressure, and the moderating role of parental educational expectations. The results show that parental homework checking frequency was positively associated with academic pressure, which in turn was positively associated with loneliness. The mediating role of academic pressure was significant. Parental educational expectations significantly and negatively moderated the relationship between homework checking and academic pressure, and the moderated mediation was significant. Simple slope analysis indicated that the positive association between homework checking and academic pressure was stronger. In the Confucian cultural context that emphasizes academic achievement and filial responsibility, frequent parental homework checking is associated with adolescent loneliness through increased academic pressure. Unexpectedly, high parental expectations served as a buffer—a pattern that differs from typical findings in Western individualistic cultures, where high expectations often directly increase psychological distress. These findings suggest that interventions in Chinese family education should distinguish controlling from supportive monitoring and transform high expectations into emotional support and resource investment, thereby reducing adolescents’ academic pressure and loneliness. Full article

Academic stress is one of the main challenges affecting the psychological well-being of university students due to its impact on mental health, academic performance, and quality of life. The aim of this study was to analyze and model the factors associated with academic stress by integrating unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques. The study was conducted with a sample of 605 students from the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Peru), who completed validated psychometric instruments, including the PSS-10, LASSI, MBI-SS, PSQI, and A-CEA. In the first stage, dimensionality reduction and clustering techniques were applied to identify latent profiles, resulting in four distinct groups reflecting different levels of adaptation and psychological vulnerability. In the second stage, eight supervised regression models were evaluated: Linear Regression, Ridge, Lasso, Elastic Net, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, XGBoost, and CatBoost. Lasso and Elastic Net showed virtually equivalent performance, achieving coefficients of determination (R²) close to 0.61 on the independent test set. Variable importance analysis revealed that academic burnout, sleep quality, and coping strategies were the main factors associated with perceived stress, together with contextual variables with lower relative importance. Overall, the results confirm the multidimensional nature of academic stress and show that integrating unsupervised and supervised approaches provides a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon in university settings. Full article

Academic stress in higher education is strongly influenced by workload structure and scheduling decisions, yet academic planning sometimes remains static and does not incorporate behavioural or physiological indicators. While existing research focuses on stress measurement and prediction, these approaches are rarely integrated into decision-support mechanisms capable of restructuring academic schedules. This work introduces a Course Digital Twin (CDT) framework that integrates multimodal student data with simulation-based academic planning. The proposed system models course scheduling as a decision-support problem, where alternative configurations are evaluated using a structured stress model combining wearable-derived physiological signals, self-reported stress measures, and contextual academic workload indicators. The framework employs a hybrid approach in which machine learning is used for physiological stress estimation, while schedule adaptation is performed through transparent rule-based mechanisms. The system was implemented as an end-to-end platform including mobile sensing, course configuration interfaces, and instructor analytics dashboards, and was evaluated through a pilot deployment across multiple postgraduate courses. Preliminary results indicate that simulation-based schedule adjustments are associated with reductions in projected peak stress levels and improved workload distribution patterns. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of integrating multimodal stress modelling and Digital Twin simulation into academic planning workflows. The proposed framework provides a foundation for future stress-aware scheduling systems, although further large-scale validation is required to establish its effectiveness and generalizability. Full article

Mental well-being has been considered a fundamental contributor to overall academic success and psychological stability. Based on the Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping, this study examined the mediating role of academic resilience in the relationship between perceived academic support and mental well-being of Kenyan TVET trainees. A quantitative cross-sectional design was employed, with a sample of 1933 trainees (M_age = 22.87 years; 57.7% male) from 239 public TVET institutions in Kenya. The following measures were administered: Perceived Academic Support Questionnaire, Academic Resilience Scale, and the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. Correlation analysis demonstrated that perceived academic support showed a strong positive association with mental well-being, whereas academic resilience indicated a moderate association. Consistent with the hypothesized model, parallel mediation analysis indicated that academic resilience partially mediated the relationship between academic support and mental well-being. The indirect effects observed across resilience dimensions indicated that emotional response was the dominant mediating pathway, while perseverance showed a small positive indirect effect, and adaptive help-seeking demonstrated a small but significant negative indirect effect. These findings contribute to the growing but limited literature on well-being in vocational training and suggest that while academic resilience serves as a key mediating mechanism, perceived academic support may also function as a direct protective factor, underscoring the importance of embedding structured emotional coping support within TVET academic environments. Full article