ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1585642
The impact of mental health literacy on depression, anxiety and well-being among vocational nursing students: mediating roles of resilience
Provisionally accepted
- 1Henan Vocational College of Nursing, Henan, China
- 2Chengdu Polytechnic, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 3Changji Vocational and Technical College, Changji, China
- 4Beijing Health Vocational College, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Anxiety and depression are increasingly prevalent among nursing students. Mental Health Literacy (MHL) has been regarded as a potential protective factor for mental health. However, the relationship between MHL, resilience, anxiety/depression and well-being among nursing students is still understudied.Objective: This study aimed to explore the relationship between MHL and anxiety, depression and well-being, as well as the mediating role of resilience among nursing students.Methods: We adopted a cross-sectional online questionnaire approach using the "Questionnaire Star" platform. The Mental Health Literacy Questionnaire-short Version for Adults (MHLq-SVa), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (CD-RISC-10), The World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were used to measure the MHL, resilience, well-being and anxiety/depression. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis and mediation effect analysis were conducted.The prevalence of anxiety and depression among nursing students were 39.4% and 9.3% respectively. MHL was negatively correlated with anxiety (r = -0.19, p < 0.001) and depression (r = -0.20, p < 0.001). MHL was positively correlated with resilience (r = 0.43, p < 0.001) and well-being (r = 0.06, p < 0.001). Resilience partially mediated the relationship between MHL and anxiety (indirect effect = -0.040; 95%CI: -0.053 to -0.030), the relationship between MHL and depression (indirect effect = -0.057; 95%CI: -0.073 to -0.040), and the relationship between MHL and well-being (indirect effect = 0.203; 95%CI: 0.177 to 0.228).Conclusion：Higher MHL levels among nursing students is associated with stronger resilience, further associated with lower levels of anxiety/depression and higher levels of well-being. Our findings provide important guidance for educational administrators and helps them formulate targeted strategies to prevent anxiety/depression among nursing students.
Keywords: Mental health literacy, resilience, Well-being, Anxiety/depression, nursing students, Cross-sectional
Received: 01 Mar 2025; Accepted: 18 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Miao, Liu, Su and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanying Yang, Henan Vocational College of Nursing, Henan, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.