中華心理衛生協會

This article investigated the relationship between adolescents' educational achievement pressure and their mental health, the stress and joy caused by the heightened value of educational achievement. I used the first wave senior high school student and parent data sets of Taiwan Education Panel Survey, which were collected in autumn of 2001 when the students were in the 11th grade. Analyses revealed a slightly curvilinear relationship (dominated most of the time by the linear term) between the mental health and the academic achievement, with higher achievement continuing to be associated with worse mental health until the achievement was high, where the downward trend stopped and curved up only very slightly. In addition, the data showed evidence of high expectation's negative effects on mental health, with effects of high expectation partially mediated by academic achievement. Specially, students' own high educational expectation had both direct and indirect negative effects on mental health, while the negative effect of parental high expectation was reduced but remained significant when academic achievement was controlled. Compared with parental expectation, students' own expectation had stronger effects. Finally, after controlling for academic achievement and self and parental expectations, high academic self-esteem was found positively related to mental health.