Association Between Self-Efficacy and Mental Health: Perceived Social Support as a Mediator

Background: Mental health is important in higher education because university students often face academic stress and social adjustment challenges. Objective: We examined the direct and indirect associations among self-efficacy, perceived social support, and mental health among students at H university in central China. Methods: A stratified convenience sample of 581 undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students completed online or face-to-face self-report questionnaires. Shortened measures were used to reduce respondent burden. Self-efficacy was assessed using six items from the Self-Efficacy Scale, perceived social support using three items from the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and mental health using six items from the 12-item General Health Questionnaire. The measures showed acceptable reliability and validity overall (α = 0.848-0.876; CR = 0.886-0.924; AVE = 0.564-0.801; HTMT < 0.85). SPSS 26 and SmartPLS v4.0 were used to examine the proposed associations with 5000 bootstrap resamples. Results: Self-efficacy had a significant positive association with mental health (β = 0.293, p < 0.001) and perceived social support (β = 0.721, p < 0.001). Perceived social support had a significant positive association with mental health (β = 0.145, p = 0.025). The indirect association between self-efficacy and mental health through perceived social support was significant (β = 0.105, p = 0.026). The model explained 16.8% of the variance in mental health and 52.0% of the variance in perceived social support. Conclusions: In this single-university sample, self-efficacy and perceived social support were positively associated with mental health. The cross-sectional self-report design and convenience sampling prevent causal conclusions and limit generalizability. The findings should also be interpreted cautiously because the shortened measures were not independently validated.