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conferenceseries
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Volume 20, Issue 7 (Suppl)
J Psychiatry
ISSN: 2378-5756 JOP, an open access journal
Psychiatry and Mental Health 2017
November 20-21, 2017
November 20-21, 2017 Melbourne, Australia
28
th
International Conference on
Psychiatry and Mental Health
Differences in the predictors of mental health between undergraduates in Nigeria and Japan
Utek Grace Ishaku and Mariko Matsumoto
Nagoya University, Japan
M
ental health is an important component for academic and social adjustment in college. The present study examined
differences in the factors predicting mental distress among University students in Nigeria and Japan, based on the
ecological model. A total of 716 undergraduates (391 Nigerians, 325 Japanese) from four universities in both countries took part
in the study. Average age of participants was 25.63 and 20.08 years in Nigeria and Japan, respectively. A self-report questionnaire
assessed several predictors including individual characteristics via the BNSG scale; micro level factors via the UCLA Loneliness
Scale and SPUSSS; exo-level factors via the MacArthur scale of subjective status and macro level factors via social participation
on the outcome measure of mental health via the GHQ-12. A four-step hierarchical regression was computed on the data from
both countries and the findings from the final model revealed that the predictors accounted for 16.1% (in Nigeria) and 31.8%
(in Japan) of the variance in mental health. Furthermore, in Nigeria, competence and loneliness were statistically significant
predictors of mental health while for Japan, autonomy, competence, relatedness, loneliness and club participation had significant
regression weights. Further analyses to evaluate the structure of the final model from the two countries showed that autonomy
(Z=-4.44, p<0.01), relatedness (Z=5.13, p<0.01) and loneliness (Z=2.57, p<0.05) had significantly different regression weights
between the countries. These findings suggest cross-cultural differences in the influence of ecological factors on mental health of
undergraduates with implications for the mental health of college students in both societies.
utek31@yahoo.comUtek Grace Ishaku et al., J Psychiatry 2017, 20:7 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2378-5756-C1-030