IMPLICIT THEORY OF MENTAL HEALTH IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study on the implicit perceptions of mental health and its components among college students. We hypothesize that people's notions of mental health are shaped by cultural influences. For a long time in Ukraine, the Soviet paradigm dominated the perception of health as a qualitative characteristic of a person. This led to the view that health is the result of a treatment process rather than the result of a chosen lifestyle. The recent reforms in public health are associated with debunking the myth of the determining role of physical health in assessing the quality of human life and the undervaluation of mental well-being as a fundamental property of personality. The study explored the internal (everyday) perceptions of young people regarding the components of mental health and its interdependence with a person's physical condition. The overall research methodology is based on studying the semantic relationships between individual components of mental health and identifying specific clusters of perceptions about mental health. Based on the results of statistical analysis of the evaluative judgments of the participants regarding the level of mental and physical health, we found that there is a connection between these personality traits. The state of physical and mental health is interrelated. We investigated that the implicit structure of “mental health” includes: “healthy sleep”, “good (bad) mood”, “physical activity”, “intimate relationships”, “social activity”, “interaction with others”, “creative activity (striving for self-realization)”, “absence of illness (physical defects) ”, “well-being”, “healthy nutrition”. It was found that there are antagonistic relationships between individual content categories of the implicit theory of mental health. These contradictions suggest that certain components of mental health may preclude the existence of others. In implicit perceptions, mental health is seen as a result of lifestyle. The obtained research results indicate that changes have occurred in Ukrainian culture, influencing Ukrainians' worl dview regarding mental health and its importance for maintaining personal well-being.