Association between chronic mental stress and academic performance among Korean adolescents

Abstract

We examined whether chronic mental stress is associated with academic performance in Korean adolescents. Our sample consisted of the 74,186 adolescents between the 7th and 12th grades (aged 12–18 years) who participated in the 8th Korean Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey in 2012. We used multivariate logistic regression analysis to clarify how chronic mental stress was related to academic performance after adjustment for age, body mass index, family economic status, parents’ education level, smoking frequency, alcohol intake frequency, and frequency of vigorous and moderate physical activity and muscular strength exercises. For boys, those with very high chronic mental stress were less likely to achieve average academic performance or higher (odds ratio [OR] = 0.738, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.629–0.867, p < 0.001) than were those with very low mental stress. For girls, those with very high mental stress were less likely (OR = 0.668, 95% CI: 0.521-0.857, p = 0.002), while those with low mental stress were more likely (OR = 1.324, 95% CI: 1.029–1.704; p = 0.029) to have average academic performance or higher, compared with girls with very low stress. Grades (tests, entrance examinations) were the primary cause of chronic mental stress in both boys (51.7%) and girls (54.8%). Republic of Korean boys and girls with very high chronic mental stress showed decreased academic performance.