Positive and Negative Influencing Factors of University Students’ Anxiety and Depression: Academic Burnout Mediates Effects of School engagement on Anxiety and Depression

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_42How to use a DOI?

Keywords

academic burnout; achievement motivation; school engagement; anxiety; depression

Abstract

With the intensifying mental health crisis around the world, the high epidemic anxiety and depression of university students as well as their dual damages to individual development and social resources, it is urgent to disclose the influencing mechanism of different factors. This study explores the influencing paths of academic burnout, achievement motivation and school engagement on anxiety and depression. According to 702 effective questionnaires and Spearman correlation analysis, three dimensions (exhaustion, cynicism and decreased professional efficacy) of academic burnout have strong positive correlations with depression (r=0.70) and anxiety (r=0.66) (p<.001), while achievement motivation (depression: r=-0.34; anxiety: r=-0.31) and three dimensions (behaviors/cognition/social contact and symptoms r=-0.40~-0.44) of school engagement show negative correlations with depression and anxiety. The multivariate regression discloses that academic burnout shows the strongest predictive power to depression (β=1.00, p<.001) and anxiety (β=0.98, p<.001), followed by school engagement (depression: β=0.28; anxiety: β=0.27). Achievement motivation shows weak predictive power (β=0.07–0.09, p<.05). The inhibition effect was found in the further mediation model: school engagement alleviates anxiety (β=-0.38, p<.001) and depression (β=-0.39, p<.001) indirectly by decreasing academic burnout, but the direct effect is significantly positive (β=0.14). As a result, the total negative effect is offset partially (indirect effect accounts for 152%-154%). The achievement motivation path fails to show significance. This study proves influences of academic burnout on depression and anxiety levels of university students. School engagement affects anxiety and depression indirectly by alleviating burnout. This study provides theoretical guidance and practical significance to researches on intervention of university students’ anxiety and depression.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Siyu Chen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - Positive and Negative Influencing Factors of University Students’ Anxiety and Depression: Academic Burnout Mediates Effects of School engagement on Anxiety and Depression
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 403
EP  - 413
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_42
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_42
ID  - Chen2026
ER  -