Investigation Of The Relationship Of College Students’ Self-actualization And Mental Health

Self-actualization refers to individual’s consciously developing his talents and aptitudes and makes them to its highest level. It not just means the full development of man’s personality and potentiality, its real value lies in the individual’s high level of harmonious psychological conditions. For its important role in the human existence and development, self-actualization is a key research field in Anthropology, Sociology, Management, Pedagogy and motivational psychology. College students are building their own world view, philosophical view and value system rapidly; they had more dilemmas of psychological demand and pubertal choice than other groups. Self-actualization of college students are intensive and imbalance. College students incline to equal self-actualization with Idealism, Egoism and Egocentrism for their stressing on self-development. This tendency will impede undergraduate’s psychological development. We can better help students cope with psychological problems by understanding their self-actualization’s traits and developmental levels.Self-actualization is a core concept of Abraham Maslow’s motivational theory. With the popularity of self-actualization, psychologist study self-actualization in the perspective of its features. Foreign researcher compiled Self-actualization Scale by study actualized person. This is the initiative step for empirical research in the field of psychology. However, major self-actualization researches were conducted on theoretical levels, and they almost concerning about Pedagogy, Literature and Management. Psychologist had made some theoretical achievement in college students’self-actualization; the empirical research in this area was stagnated. Their research methods were qualitative, such as observation, interview and archival material study. There is little research in the field of undergraduate self-actualization. Meanwhile, their researches were carried out in overall perspective. This paper conducts empirical research on the relationship between college student’s self-actualization and mental health on the basis of previous researches. We learn the current situation of students’mental health and their self-actualization by this study. The result of this research can provide some theatrical support to relevant researches. More significantly, it can provide practical methods to improve the college student’s self-actualization level, help psychological consultant find more effective ways to ameliorate their psychological problems.In order to explore the relationship between college student’s self-actualization and mental health, the paper randomly selected550college students from Yangtze universities. It use Short Index of Self-Actualization and SCL-90to survey the college students self-actualization and mental health by questionnaire, taking back502copies, the vitality rate is86.5%. The following are the research results:(1). College student’s self-actualization is significant difference in different specialties and residences. Art students are more easily to realize their self-actualization(t=1.230, p=0.001) than science students, students from rural areas are facing more obstacles to realize their self-actualization than urban students(t=1.114, p=0.015).(2). Level of college students self-actualization is low in overall aspect, they are below the national self-actualization standard, the difference is statistical significance, and girls is lower than boys in their self-actualization.(3). Level of college students mental health is low in overall aspect, their scores are higher than national standard in somatization, obsessive-compulsion, interpersonal relationship, depression, anxiety, hostility, horror, bigotry, sleep, appetite and psychotic.(4). Girls have worse mental health conditions than boys; there are significant difference in interpersonal sensitivity, depression and anxiety. The average score of female is higher than male.(5). Art students mental health are better than science students, there are significant difference between them in somatization, obsessive-compulsion, interpersonal relationship sensitivity, depression, hostility, anxiety and bigotry, their difference in horror and psychotic is not significant; science students had higher score than art students in the factors of somatization, obsessive-compulsion, depression, horror, psychotic, hostility and bigotry, art students had a higher score than science students in the factors of anxiety and interpersonal relationship sensitivity.(6). There are significant difference in anxiety factor of mental health among different grades; their score are increasing according to their grades. The differences of others factors are not significant.(7). Rural students mental health are lower than urban students in overall levels, rural students have higher scores in anxiety, obsessive-compulsion, social withdrawal and sexual psychology than urban students. There are significant differences between them in the factors of somatization and horror.(8). Only-child students and not only-child students have significant difference in the factor of obsessive-compulsion; not only-child students have higher scores than only-child students. They have significant difference in depression factor, which means not only-child students are inclined to have depressed feelings. There are no statistical differences in other8factors of SCL-90.(9). There are differences in self-actualization and mental health between different groups. Art students are better than science students in self-actualization and mental health; urban students are better than rural students in self-actualization and mental health.(10). College students self-actualization and mental health have a positive correlation, the better self-actualization they have, they will have a higher mental health level, and vice versa, the worse of their self-actualization, they will have a lower mental health level.