The relationship between stress management education and changes in students' mental health at the National Institute of Technology during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Pandemic of emerging infectious diseases can affect students' mental health. In stress management education as part of students' support, understanding stress responses and motivating coping mechanisms are considered effective. However, only a few studies exist on stress management education during emerging infectious diseases, particularly on improvement mechanisms for students' mental health. In this study, we provided stress management education online during the COVID-19 pandemic to students enrolled in the National Institute of Technology and analyzed their responses to the questionnaire through structural equation modeling. The results revealed that in Model 1 (understanding stress responses will affect students' mental health through mediate motivation for coping behavior) showed a better goodness of fit than Model 2 (understanding stress responses and motivation for coping behavior will affect students mental health independently). The results suggest the importance of educating by associating stress responses and coping behavior, and not independently educating stress responses and coping behavior.