There is an increasing prevalence of mental health problems among university student populations, medical students experience higher levels of emotional and psychiatric disorders [20–21]. Through this study, we have a new understanding of the influencing factors of social anxiety among medical students.
The results show that social anxiety scores of college students in Liaoning province are generally high, this indicates the importance of early intervention to most medical students with interaction anxiety. Looking back at some of the studies that have been done, there is a high correlation between negative life events and interaction anxiousness, the positive predictive effect of negative life events on interaction anxiousness has been supported by numerous studies[22–23]. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that in correlation analysis, two dimensions of negative life events were significant positive associated with interaction anxiousness (i.e. health adaptation factor, learning pressure factor). We cannot help but speculate that controlling the influence of negative life events in two dimensions can alleviate the negative impact of interaction anxiousness on medical college students.
Results of Model II showed that three dimensions of mental vulnerability all had a significant impact on interaction anxiousness under the control of sociodemographic variables. After the mental vulnerability variables were included in Model III, only Psychosomatic symptoms and Interpersonal problems among them were significant predictors of interaction anxiousness. This is partially consistent with Xie and Fan et al [24–25], who demonstrated that College students are troubled by interaction anxiousness in their interpersonal relationship, interpersonal problems is still one of the important causes of psychological problems among college students, which more likely to happen when people are afraid of being excluded or isolated.
According to the goodness-of-fit indexes, the structural equation modeling analysis of the effect of negative life events on interaction anxiousness with mental vulnerability as a mediator indicated that is consistent with the hypothesis model. This indicates the higher level of negative life events you perceive, the worse the mental vulnerability you report, the more serious the interaction anxiety. The results of this study will help to test the validity of the process model that links negative life events with interaction anxiety through mental vulnerability may play an intermediary role between negative life events and interaction anxiousness. This study did not discuss the influence of other factors, and the follow-up study can further improve the research method, and discuss the influencing factors in-depth way. Its cross-sectional and correlational design limits the ability to draw any causal inferences.
In conclusion, mental vulnerability play a partial mediating role in negative life events and interaction anxiousness. However, longitudinal research is needed to confirm these findings. It is particularly important to expand the construction of mental health team in colleges and change the previous education mode of remedial mental health. The mental health of undergraduate students should attract more attention of education workers and medical workers. For mental health professionals, when making decisions to reduce undergraduate students' interaction anxiousness, more attention should be paid to students who are mentally vulnerable or have experienced negative life events.
Limitations
The selected samples have a few limitations, only three schools in one province were selected for the survey, in future studies, the sample coverage should be expanded to take into account the adaptability of different target groups.