Assessment of the Students’ Mental Health in the University of Garmian Using the Kurdish General Health Questionnaire

Abstract

It is predicted that Kurdish people, especially in Garmian District, face more mental health issues due to war, displacement and numerous political conflicts. On the other hand, different studies showed that mental health of university students decreases during their educational years. So, this study aimed to investigate the mental health of students in University of Garmian, using the Kurdish General Health Questionnaire (K-GHQ). In this cross-sectional study sample consists of 156 students selected by multistage cluster sampling among the students of five colleges from the University of Garmian. Furthermore, data were collected using Kurdish version of GHQ and demographic questionnaire. First, the GHQ successfully translated into Kurdish and back translated into English by independent professional bilingual translators. After preparing the finalized Kurdish GHQ, data were collected from May 2018 to February 2019. The investigation of reliability and validity of K-GHQ showed that this version is a valid and reliable tool for evaluation of mental health in university students. The average of mental health scores showed that only 3.25% of students were at normal mental health status and more than 96.75% of the participants were at risk. Of these, 37.6% suffered from mild problems, 51.9% had moderate, and 7.14% had severe problems. The higher scores were due to anxiety/insomnia (14.24) and social dysfunction (11.86). However, no differences were observed between the genders, but there were significant differences in global score and three sub-scales scores between freshmen and students of other grades. Because of the high prevalence of mental health problems in students of University of Garmian, effective interventions like CBT, MBSR and TFT are needed to reduce the effect of stressors and improve their mental health status.

Keywords

• mental health
• college students
• kurdish ghq