Mental well-being in the undergraduate ELT classroom: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis

Undergraduate (UG) students face intense, unprecedented psychological pressures, with English language teaching (ELT) classrooms also serving as high-pressure spaces. The fragmented scholarship on mental well-being in undergraduate ELT contexts lacks an intellectual map; thus, this bibliometric study presents a comprehensive analysis of 345 Scopus-indexed documents from 2016 to 2026. It uses performance analysis and science mapping techniques with Biblioshiny (R package version 1.12.1) and VOSviewer (version 1.6.20). The data reveals an annual growth rate of 28.73%. Frontiers in Psychology published the most articles; Wang, Yongliang remains the most prominent author, and Islamic Azad University and China dominate the global publication landscape. The most frequently used keyword co-occurrences were "human", "positive psychology" and "anxiety", and the most frequent co-authorship network were Derakhshan, Ali; Wang, Yongliang. The findings depict a shift from a deficit-based approach to positive psychology approaches. Further research should focus on promoting mental well-being through empirical studies and a psycholinguistic perspective.