The Relationship Between Student Engagement and Mental Health Among TSU-CASS Students

Life in college is considered as an exciting part of our education life yet the most stressful and challenging among the other levels of education. As expected, there are enough evidences to show that students gain content knowledge during college especially with the intervention of our major subjects. It is our nature as students to overcome all of the challenges that we will be encountering and to have eagerness to pave our way into educational success. The skills conveyed in high school are essential for success. Students who do not achieve these skills are likely to experience long-term consequences. Particularly, the completion of high school is an important milestone of adolescent development and a critical predictor of future success and overall well-being. (Motors & Europe, 2016)

In our modern days, students want to be engaged to school activities, programs, and organizations. Student Engagement refers to the degree of attention, willingness, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion (Olson & Peterson, 2015). Engaged students are more likely to perform well on their studies and less likely to drop out (Martin & Torres, 2012). Active engagement in school is vital to a student’s educational success and subsequent development into a competent member of society. (Wang & Peck, 2013). Students often focus on academics sacrificing personal factors, including interests and extracurricular activities. This might result to a decline in academic performance, as mental health is vital to optimum academic functioning.

Various definitions of mental health are spread all throughout the internet and all other research papers. Goldstein defines mental health as the balance between organs and environment in the progress towards self-actualization. Chauhanss (1991) considers mental health as a state of psychological maturity defined as the maximum effectiveness and satisfaction obtained through individual and social opposition including positive feedbacks and feelings towards self and others. The challenges that students may interfere during university years can have a result of mental health issues, consequently endangering their health.

The primary goal of students engaging themselves to various school activities and school performances is for them to fully be developed and grow academically, emotionally, and socially in order for them to be globally competent. Abrea (2015), stated that the identified extracurricular activities on her study contributed to a great extent to students’ mental, social, physical, behavioral and moral development. However, according to Hopkins (2013), a balanced academic and extracurricular activities is essential for a better school-life experience and optimal academic functioning.