EWC661

ENGLISH FOR DRAFT REPORT WRITING

TITLE:

THE AWARENESS OF MENTAL ILLNESS AMONG MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

STUDENTS IN UiTM SHAH ALAM

FACULTY:

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

GROUP:

EMD4M11B

LECTURER’S NAME:

MRS CHITTRA MUTHUSAMY

SUBMISSION DATE:

1 MAY 2020

PREPARED BY:

NO. NAME STUDENT ID

1 KASMIN DANIL 2019678826
2 SHARIZAD HAKIM BIN SUADI 2019814328
3 MUHAMMAD IZZULDIN BIN ROSLAN 2019541913
4 ZIKRI ADHAM BIN MOHD NASIL 2019455586
 TABLE OF CONTENT

NO TITLE PAGE

1 INTRODUCTION 1

2 PROBLEM STATEMENT 2

3 OBJECTIVES 3

4 RESEARC QUESTION 4

5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 5

6 SCOPE OF STUDY 6

7 METHODOLOGY 7

8 REFERENCE 9
 INTRODUCTION

Recently there are lot of cases that happened related to mental problem among
university student. Being a university student is a stressful phase for an individual. They are
required to juggle different roles in being a student as well as continuously developing as a
person while undergoing role transition from adolescent to adulthood. Examinations, group
projects and activities as well as relationship issues are among stress-inducing events faced
by university students. Therefore, they are directly and indirectly exposed to different kinds
of mental health issues that may interfere with their daily functioning. The failure to cope
with these multiple roles may lead to the feelings of hopelessness, exhaustion, impaired
functioning, rumination, lack of sleep, and poor sleep quality. Among different mental health
problems, stress, anxiety and depression have been identified as the most common amongst
university students.

The main purpose of this study is to create awareness among students about mental
illness. Many students don’t aware of mental illness due to rarely discussed among them.
Sometimes, students did not notice that they are having symptoms of mental illness. This
kind of problem is not easy for them to notice it on their own. Therefore, exposure must be
provided to help students prevent themselves from this problem or to help them recover from
mental illness while reducing social problems in society.

1
 PROBLEM STATEMENT

A Student’s life may be stressful and for a few students it should cause mental
distress. Besides being a serious public health challenge, mental distress can influence
academic achievement. Statistics revealed a worsening state of mental state problems among
Malaysian students, which shows that there's a rise cases of mental state from 2011 to 2016.
Experts cite anxiety and depression because the main causes of mental state problems among
students although not ruling out the influence of drug as an element. The World Health
Organization (WHO) reported that of all illnesses, depression is that the leading reason
behind pathological state and disability worldwide. According to the newest estimates from
WHO, over 300 million people are now living with depression. Depression and anxiety are
prevalent problems in colleges across the country. During college, students experience many
firsts, including a brand-new lifestyle, friends, roommates, exposure to a brand new culture
and experiences. Students may struggle if they cannot manage these firsts. If students aren't
prepared to cope, they'll become easily at risk of depression and anxiety.

According to the Malaysia Mental Health Association, the prevalence of suicidal

ideation either associated with depression or other mental illness was also reported to be the
highest among teenagers (6.4%) and young adults aged 16 to 24 years old (11%). Besides,the
research findings on the mental health of engineering students, which indicated that about 1%
of them tended to have a specific intervention in depression, about 18% tended to have a
specific intervention in anxiety, and 1.5% tended to have a specific intervention in stress (Lee
& Ahmad, 2016). This outcome seems to be due to the current education system in Malaysia,
which requires students to work hard and put in more effort to achieve the high demands of
the system (Ferlis, Rathakrishan, & Ismail, 2009). As a result, students feel pressured.

Depression could be a medical condition which will affect a student's ability to figure,
study, interact with peers, or be sure of themselves. Symptoms of depression may include
difficulty sleeping or sleeping an excessive amount of, appetite changes, withdrawing from
participating in activities once enjoyed, feelings of sadness, hopelessness, unhappiness, and
difficulty concentrating on college works. Symptoms of depression also can result in thoughts
of suicide.

Evidently, this scenario will continue to exist if majority Mechanical student still do
not know how to overcome the mental illness. Hence, the study will be significant to unleash
some basic information on mental illness among Mechanical Engineering students.

2
 RESEARCH QUESTION

1. What is the main factor to mental illness among mechanical engineering

students in UITM, SHAH ALAM?
2. How mechanical engineering students in UITM, SHAH ALAM, can avoid
or decrease the possibility to get mental illness?
3. What type of mental illness mechanical engineering student in UITM,
SHAH ALAM face?
4. who can help students that have mental illness among mechanical
engineering students?

3
 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to investigate mental illness among mechanical engineering
student in UiTM Shah Alam. This study suggests several research objectives to achieve as
follows:

(a) Identify factors that cause students to have mental problem like stress, anxiety and
depression
(b) To know the main contributors to mental problem.
(c) To identify precautions, methods, or solutions when students face any problem
that leads to mental illness.
(d) To identify how students, cope with mental illness.

4
 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

The findings of this study can benefit many people. First, it is surely to prevent the
mental illness among student become more serious. Before it turns into worse scenario such
as suicide and crime. Next, our finding also can benefit educators or the counselling unit to be
able to identify reason for mental illness among students and solve it immediately. As we
know university’s counsellor play a big job to ensure students mental health to be healthy.
From our research, it can help student to take precautions from having mental illness.
Furthermore, it helps student to study in stress free and conducive environment.

5
 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

There are several potential limitations to this study. Firstly, students may be less
interested in answer a questionnaire that will be distributed since not many students familiar
with the mental illness. The personality of each student may also influence their perspective
on this issue because every person has their personal preference. Lastly, the sample size is too
small and thus, the results cannot be generalized to all UiTM students.

6
 PREVIOUS STUDIES

Mental illness among students is quite popular despite there are many professional
writers has wrote related to it. According to Md Nordin and Abu Talib (2019) {One of the
factors that could affect students’ psychological well-being is stress. There are various factors
that can lead to stress among students, for instance financial difficulties, academic pressure,
unconducive study environment, lack of career preparation, negative perceptions towards
personal appearance, and poor relationship with peers}. This shows that students are facing
many obstacles through their study that can turn into huge problem if it is not well-handled.

As reported by Andrews and Wilding (2019), students who struggle with stress not
only can affect their mental health, their academic performance also have been claimed to be
affected as well. Students who faces stress is caused by poor academic performance, high
workloads given by the lecturers, difficulty in understanding the lesson and other factors as
well. They conclude that the more assignments students have at a one time, the higher stress
among university students.

Other than stress, anxiety also a common illness that experienced by university
students. Social anxiety causes individuals to feel fear social situations. People tend to
assume that if they feel anxious in a social situation, it is because they are not performing
well (Purdon et al., 2001). According to James January et al. (2018), “Psychological distress
among students may adversely influence their academic performance and quality of life and
may contribute to alcohol and substance abuse, decreased empathy, and academic dishonesty.
This shows the consequences to students with mental illness. While in an article, Kelly
(2002),” Making effective use of time involves maximizing functions such as starting a task,
staying focused, and balancing one task against another. Developing work plans may be one
way to address this”. It gives the answers on how utilizing time management could help
students prevent mental illness.

According to Catherine Munn (2019), In relation to mental health, there are numerous
factors should be counted such as academic readiness, habits and coping skills, as well as grit
and persistence in the face of academic difficulty also can cause student to experience mental
illness. She said we need to know if the student is ready for university life because each and
every person was raised of from different background, culture, parental care.

7
 METHODOLOGY

This study will be conducted by distributing questionnaires for students from various
semester in mechanical engineering faculty in UiTM Shah Alam. A quantitative method is
used to make this research. The questionnaires will be distributed through a medium called
Google Form and the duration for students to fill in the forms are lasts for only three days.
There will be several questions that are related to mental illness and most of them are in
objectives questions survey. This will help us to extract the information gained from the
survey easily. One of our objectives is to figure out student’s perspective toward mental
illness. The consequential questions such as semester, age, and gender of each student also
will be included to monitor the data. The responses from the students will be recorded after
three days and around 20-30 responses will be collected to analyse the study. This survey is
targeted to be conducted on May 2020.

8
 REFERENCES

1. Erica Riba and Diana Cusumano et al. (2019), Depression among college students.
Retrieved April 20, 2020 from
https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/depression-
among-college-students

2. Azman Othman and Mas Anom Abdul Rashid (2018), Stress and Mental of
Undergraduate Students at a Private Higher Learning Institution in Malaysia.
Retrieved April 20, 2020 from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326777786_STRESS_AND_MENTAL_OF
_UNDERGRADUTE_STUDENTS_AT_A_PRIVATE_HIGHER_LEARNING_INS
TITUTION_IN_MALAYSIA

3. Halimatus Sakdiah Minhat and Tasneem Abdalgfar Alawad(2019), Risks of Mental

Problems Among Medical Students in a Public University in Malaysia. Retrieved
April 20, 2020 from
https://medic.upm.edu.my/upload/dokumen/2019110412124610_MJMHS_0151.pdf

4. Lee, M.F and Saiyid, S. (2019), Factors Contributing towards Malaysian Technical
University (MTU) Students’ Mental Health. Retrieved April 20, 2020 from
http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/Pertanika%20PAPERS/JSSH%20Vol.
%2025%20(S)%20May.%202017/11%20JSSH(S)-0455-2017-2ndProof.pdf

5. James January et al. (2018), Prevalence of depression and anxiety among

undergraduate university students in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic
review protocol. Retrieved April 20, 2020 from
https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-018-
0723-8

6. Kelly et al. (2002), Impact of Time Management Behaviours on Undergraduate

Engineering Students’ Performance. Retrieved April 18,2020 from
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244018824506

7. Catherine Munn (2019), Why are so many students struggling with their mental
health? Retrieved April 19,2020 from https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-
opinion/why-are-so-many-students-struggling-with-their-mental-health/

8. Halimah Mohd Yusof et al. (2019) Does University Students’ Stress Have an Impact
on their Psychological Well-Being? Retrieved April 15, 2020 from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334394469_Does_University_Students'_Str
ess_Have_an_Impact_on_their_Psychological_Well-Being.

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