4. To find out more regarding the pressure received by university students.
5. To inform that mental health can not be self-diagnosed.
c) Topic Significance and Correlation to Emotional Intelligence
This essay plays a significant role in assisting to raise social awareness toward university students’ mental health, as stated in the title. Social awareness itself is indispensable in creating strong bonds with one another as social creatures. Without being socially aware, we are neglecting others’ feelings, thoughts, and actions—being inconsiderate and ignorant, perhaps even selfish. In fact, it is the key to address the society’s needs and concerns to empathize and create a more peaceful world of comprehension and tolerance, where everyone should be able to become a blessing that positively influences others. Besides, a profound social awareness defines our adaptability in adjusting to the surroundings. That means catching up with any changes revolving around and understanding the circumstances further. Indeed, it is inevitable for more sustainable relationships.
Corresponding with emotional intelligence, social awareness is considered part of it. With social awareness being left out, no one could be completely emotionally intelligent, as a missing piece does exist. They are integrated—social awareness is interconnected with mental health, which is involved in emotional intelligence development. If one is mentally healthy, it is an excellent benefit to pursue favorable attitudes when responding to oneself and others—when attempting social awareness. That is the reason behind the selection of the topic “Social Awareness Toward University Students’ Mental Health”, to attract more of the society to a far more renewed mindset regarding both issues—social awareness and mental health— particularly among university students.
B. Justification
This research has the following justifications.
1. Increasing University Students’ Social Awareness Regarding Mental Health
The social awareness regarding mental health in Indonesia is not good enough. There are still many people that think their physical health is more important so that they put aside their mental health which is not true. The ones who make us human are physical and mental. Without one of them we are not complete. That is why it is important to take care of all of them. In this essay, we focus our topic to the university students because we understand that it will be hard to discuss if we have a very broad target and since we are university students, we choose to start from it. In fact, in this stage also having a social awareness regarding mental health is very important because in the university student level we are actually fragile because we are too old to get protection (or we can say we are not a child nor teenager anymore) but also, we’re too young to face free social life. In this stage also, we will get so many new experiences that maybe can affect our mental health. For example, we are accepting too many pressures, experiencing something really bad that can cause a trauma, or anything else that can affect our mental health. How can we deal with it if we are not having a social awareness regarding mental health? That is why our topic is “Social Awareness Toward University Students’ Mental Health”.
2. Providing the Correct Concepts About Mental Health To University Students Who Are Starting To Be Socially Aware of It
Increasing university students’ social awareness regarding mental health does not mean that there are no university students who are aware about it. Some of them do but the next questions are do they have the right concepts or knowledge? Unfortunately, not all of them have it. It is proven from the social media, some of university students have talk about mental health, they share their experience through social media but sadly some of them directly presume they are having some mental issues but they never check it to the psychologist and if others ask about how do they know, they will just say “I know it from Google”. That kind of answer is not good and tends to make other people underestimate something that is actually good. That is why increasing university students’ social awareness regarding mental health must be balanced by giving them the right concepts and knowledge. What kind of concepts and knowledge will be needed by university students? Of course we can start from the basic one such as what is mental health, how to treat your mental health well, what is the sign if there is something wrong with your mental health, what is the right steps if you feel that there is something with your mental health, etc.
