CHAPTER I

BEHAVIORISM AND MENTAL HEALTH

In this chapter of research, the description, function and importance of mental health will

be tackled for further knowledge on how it affects the whole being of a person especially a

student, not just how people think and how brain controls the body. Moreover, the different

problems that students face will be discussed e.g., workload, overwork, family problems, time,

money, and health. Lastly is the behaviorism theory of B.F. Skinner, the theory which the

researchers made as a basis.

Mental Health

Mental health involves a person’s emotional, social, or psychological capacity to act and

develop one’s well-being. It determine how one make decision or choices that will affect one’s

life. Mental health affects one’s behavior depending on how they think, feel, and interact with

other students. Behavior can be defined as the reaction of a person, group, or species to its

environment. It is the physical actions associated with the individuals. It refers to the way on

how our actions respond to the situations in the present.

Mental health affects the student’s behavior and dealing with some of the following

factors that may have both of the positive and negative results in their lifestyle and education.

These factors include self-esteem, feeling loved, confidence, family break-up or loss, physical ill

health, and abuse.

Mentality acts as the motherboard, a person’s mentality is the machine that produces

work, force and energy for others to benefit. Mental health makes a person mentality very stable,

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focused, and unconfused. It also gives reactions as if it tries to send a message to the body, if the

person’s mental health is suffering fatigue, stress, or exhaustion.

Mental health tells the mind's necessities, current state, and everything that involves how

its thoughts and actions work. Since the brain is responsible for the functioning of almost all

parts of the body, mental health has a big part on a human person's life, and maintaining it's

healthy state is essential for proper actions, emotions, decisions, and healthy view or perspective

on life. In that daily basis, mental health is very functional.1

Mental health affects a person’s daily lives, physical health, and relationships to other

people. It makes them how to be matured enough to handle such problems. Being mentally

unhealthy have huge effects in the body and also in the mind. It can lead to diseases such as

schizophrenia, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. There is a connection between the mind and

the body that trigger to these diseases. When a person is stressed and overthinks a lot, his or her

body reacts showing that something isn’t right.

Feeling loved, is one of the factors that can positively influence a student’s mental health.

Being able to feel the love and safety with others helps to develop one’s relationship for easier

communication and more likely to have good self-esteem. While self-esteem is the satisfaction of

one’s worth. Students with high self-esteem motivates themselves to think of all the positive

outlook of their life. Confidence is the ability to stand alone without a fear of failure. Having

1
California Mental Health Society Association, “What does mental health mean?” What is mental health?
(2016): California Mental Health Society Association, https://walkinourshoes.org/what-is-mental-health (accessed
on December 11 2018).

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courage to face all the challenges and risk in life. These are some of the factors that positively

affects one’s mental health.

Family break-up or loss is one of the leading negative causes that can affect student’s

mental health and behavior. It leads to their loss of interest in socialization with their classmates

and coping up with their academic performances.

Physical ill health can often cause mental health problems. Some physical illness affect

the brain that can lead to mental illness making it hard to recover. Lastly is the abuse. Not only

physical but also sexually, verbally, psychological that can cause problems in one’s mental

health. It may lead to low self-esteem, lower self-confidence, and depression.

Students should learn to have proper time management, develop their self-esteem, and

boost their confidence for them to have a good behavior and interaction with others and

especially to their academic performance. They also need to make themselves comfortable with

their surroundings and not to pressure everything they do with accordance to their works.

Importance of Mental Health

The study will be a great benefit for the students as it is important that the students are

aware of their mental health, because it can affect their everyday living, and their mood that can

lead to stress or depression. This research is also conducted for the benefit of adults such as

parents and teachers to know and monitor their child if there is any problem that they can’t solve

because of having mental illnesses. Additionally, it informs and gives awareness to the parents to

assess their children’s mental needs. On the other hand, teachers must assess if their students are

having emotional or mental stress for them to associate the problems and frustrations of students

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 Problems that Students Face

Nowadays students are being influenced by many factors in their environment, and

therefore results in a change in their behavior. The issue at hand concerns the behavior of

students from ages 10-20 when they are alone or around different people and how they are

influenced by outside factors. There are 4 problems that students face according to the

researchers’ experiences.

Stress

Workload

Workload stress is a type of stress which concerns having a lot of errands

dumped onto a person and he/she is expected to finish it in a limited amount of

time.

“It’s unlikely that your workload is going to be just right all by itself. You may
have too much to do, you may not — eek — have enough to do, or you may just
not be getting the level of satisfaction you need from the work you’re being asked
to do. If you feel like you need to solve any of these problems, talk to your direct
supervisor. Of course, all three require some delicacy.”2

Workload can be in any form, from paperwork, to farm work. Due to the

increase of work, the person is agitated as a response and therefore results to a

buildup of stress in a person's mind. The large amount of work consumes the

2
Berman, Robby. “What to say when your workload is a problem,” (2018):
https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/workload-problem. (accessed on December 11 2018).

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 person's thoughts entirely, and this is when he/she starts to panic and even ignore

everything else around him/her.

Overwork

Work-related stress is a growing problem that affects not only the health

and well-being of the students, but also the productivity of their work as a student.

Work-related stress arises where work demands of various types and

combinations exceed the person’s capacity and capability to cope. Students get

mental health problems due to too much things to do related in school. They tend

to finish their performance tasks on time, but may cause panic attacks.

Family Problems

Family problems can affect the students by distracting them with their

focus on studying. The student can somehow remember the problem when he or

she is doing his or her work, additionally, the student overthinks and may lead to

depression and frustration. Stress can be harnessed by students through family

problems such as financial –family problems, bankruptcy, loss of job by their

parents, family health and etc. The parents of the students are the base core of

their productivity. They provide the basic needs of their children. If the students

are suffering family problem, the family itself is the cause of stress of that student.

Time

Some students are having a hard time with their time management, because they tend to

play games first before finishing all of their school works. Sometimes they are stressed or

depressed, they don’t have the mood or eager to do their work. Time is very limited, and

deadlines can kill students’ time. It gives them pressure and panic attacks.

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Money

Many students accumulate debt before they realize what's happening, and it may be

difficult to start digging your way out of debt once you graduate. According to the Institute for

College Access & Success, debt levels for students pursuing a degree in 2016 ranged from a low

of $4,600 to a high of $59,100. That debt can lead to financial problems that follow students for

years--even decades--after graduation.3 College tuition and fees are large expenses for students.

A full-time college student might spend thousands of dollars each term for credit hours, campus

parking and books.4 A typical financial problem of students is they don't take the time to assess

before they reach an excess in credit card debt or other debt. Many students who are out on their

own for the first time may get caught up in a cycle of overspending that comes with eating out,

buying new clothes or partying. This lifestyle can become expensive very quickly and can

increase overall debt.5

The Focus of Mental Health through Behaviorism

The focus of this conducted research are the behaviorism, mentality, mental states, and

daily activities of people, wherein they react to certain situation depending in stress levels,

fatigue, overworking, and too much workload. Both behaviorism and mental state are conducted

through philosophy, psychology, psychosocial and mental behavior of humans, especially the

students, adolescents, and the youth. The delimitation of the study are the disorders which might

exist as students experience absurd stress and unhealthy mental state.

3
Daniel, McRobbin. “The Classroom,” Student financial problems (2018):
4
https://www.theclassroom.com/student-financial-problems-
13608629.html?fbclid=IwAR3XDVrYAy0q24dszYEWnGRt8Ae9zNRgbiRZdndE29HWEwfd1ZR_PnmL0lc
(accessed on December 11 2018)

5
Ibid.

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 Theories of the Study

Behaviorism Theory of B.F. Skinner

Behaviorism theory of B.F Skinner states that the mental breakdown and struggles could

be conquered through training or conditioning of the mind, which people do starting from the

day a person was born. Human parents reinforce their children, and nurture their whole being the

way they want them to be. Skinner, recognized the role of internal mental events.6 This would be

helpful in the research for solving the students’ problem to shape their mind on doing tasks and

responsibilities.

Behaviorism Theory of John B. Watson

Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of

natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms

no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the

readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. John B.

Watson, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line

between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms

only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation.7 Cognitive behaviorism is the basic

phenomena that is used in this study.

6
McLeod, S. Behaviorist approach. (2017) https://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html.
(accessed on Jan. 11, 2019)
7
Green, Christopher D. Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. John B. Watson (1913).
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/views.htm. (accessed on Jan. 11, 2019)

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 Terms Related to Mental Health and Behaviorism

There are following terms were important to the study. In order for the readers to further

understand the concept of this research, this section mainly explains the idea and meaning of the

basic terms.

Mental Health is a dimension of mental prosperity or a nonappearance of psychological

sickness. It is the "mental condition of somebody who is working at an attractive dimension of

enthusiastic and social modification”

Behavior is the manner by which somebody acts or acted that is affected by its situation,

environment, and emotions. It is also the range of actions and mannerisms, as well as the

response of the system of an individual.

Mentality is a person’s mindset about certain events. It is also called the mental capacity

of an individual which is the measure or one’s thinking and one’s property of intelligence.

Mental states is a psychological state of perspective that includes mind itself. It is a

relation that connects the agent with a proposition. Several of these states are a combination

of mental representations and propositional attitudes.

Psychosocial is an approach which takes a view at people with regards to the joined

impact that mental components and the encompassing social condition have on their physical and

mental wellbeing and their capacity to work.

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 Bibliography

California Mental Health Society Association, “What does mental health mean?” What is mental
health? (2016): California Mental Health Society Association,
https://walkinourshoes.org/what-is-mental-health (accessed on December 11 2018).

Berman, Robby. “What to say when your workload is a problem,” (2018):

https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/workload-problem. (accessed on December 11 2018).
Daniel, McRobbin. “The Classroom,” Student financial problems (2018):
https://www.theclassroom.com/student-financial-problems-
13608629.html?fbclid=IwAR3XDVrYAy0q24dszYEWnGRt8Ae9zNRgbiRZdndE29HW
Ewfd1ZR_PnmL0lc (accessed on December 11 2018).