Psychological Adjustment and Academic Stress as Correlates of Mental Health among College Students in Katsina State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated psychological adjustment and academic stress as correlates of mental health among College students in Katsina state, Nigeria. Correlation research design was adopted. The sample school comprise of all Colleges of Education in Katsina State while target population consist of 3,125 consists of the 200 Level students 2025/2026 academic session. A sample size of 346 was selected for this study. Three instruments were used for the study; Psychological Adjustment Questionnaire (PAQ), Academic Stress Questionnaire (ASQ) and Mental Health Questionnaires (MHQ).Split-half technique of reliability test was used and Cronbach alpha was used to determine the reliability coefficients 0.87, 0.79 and 0.89 for PAQ, ASQ and MHQ respectively. Three research questions were formulated and three research hypotheses were generated and tested, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyzed research question and test hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level of significant. The result shown that, there was a high level of psychological adjustment, moderate level of academic stress and mental health. Result also, indicates a good level of correlation. R2 =.903 which is equivalent to 90%, indicating the level of shared variance between the dependent variable and the independent variables (Fc=342, .966 ;< 0.05). The study concluded that, psychological adjustment significant correlation with mental health and there was significant relationship between academic stress and mental health. Based on these findings, it was recommended that College authority should employ metal health counsellors in college counselling centre to create an enabling environment where students can achieve positively in their life endeavour.