Parents' Marital Status and Psychological Distress among College Students

摘要

The main objective of the recent study was to explore the association between parents' marital status and psychological distress in college student. The sample consisted of 1024 students from various colleges in Indonesia (297 men and 727 women). Psychological distress was measured by the Bahasa Indonesia version of Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25). The result of descriptive statistics proved that most of the participants had high psychological distress. Participants raised by married parents tend to have lower psychological distress than participants raised by widowed or divorced parent(s). The analysis of each aspect showed that participants raised by widowed parent had higher anxiety than participants raised by married parents. Meantime, participants raised by divorced parents had higher depression compared to participants raised by married parents. It also indicated the interactions between gender, parent's marital status, and psychological distress. These findings could be reference for academic counselor to enforce a prevention program for college students who may suffer from high psychological distress, especially for college students who raised in divorced or widowed families.