An Exploration of Female Higher Education Students’ Mental Health Experiences: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

This qualitative research study explores the mental experiences of young Chinese women currently enrolled in or who have previously completed higher education in China. I employed a narrative inquiry approach, conducting in-depth interviews with eight young Chinese women to gather their life experiences. Based on their life stories, I used reflective thematic analysis to identify factors influencing their mental health experiences and explore how these factors affect them.
The insights that emerged from the data indicated that show that family, school, and university provide both support and challenges in individual development. Within the family, strong attachment relationships can provide emotional support, but when parental expectations do not align with the daughter’s own aspirations, coupled with the influence of traditional norms such as filial piety and gender, emotional misalignment and repression may occur. While schools offer students opportunities for learning and socializing, the tense atmosphere, disciplinary constraints, and gendered emotional norms can exacerbate psychological distress, especially for students facing conflicting expectations. University, on the other hand, provides more autonomy, diversity, and space for self-exploration, contributing to personal growth, but also bringing uncertainty and emotional distress, particularly for students unaccustomed to independent decision-making.
This study emphasizes the importance of students’ subjective experiences and cultural context in understanding mental health in higher education. Theoretically, it extends Kleinman’s framework to show how ideology, shaped by national and collective values, influences young women’s self-understanding through family and school contexts.
The study introduces three original concepts: misaligned expectations, submissive emotions, and unnameable pain, offering a novel and nuanced perspective on the factors affecting mental health experiences and their impacts.
Empirically, the study identifies three coping patterns for mental health challenges: active exploration and coping, persistent dilemma, and deliberate avoidance. These patterns reveal the underlying gendered and cultural characteristics of emotional processing.
Methodologically, story-writing was employed as an analytical tool, which not only facilitates data filtering and analysis but also provides an innovative approach for studying complex life experiences and mental health experiences.

Date of Award	20 Apr 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Department of Education
Supervisor	Carol Taylor (Supervisor) & Sam Carr (Supervisor)