Concerns about college student mental health are rising in Taiwan. Guided by the Emerging Adulthood theory, this study uses forum-based big data to identify factors associated with students’ psychological distress. We collected 2023–2024 posts from Dcard, a popular Taiwanese forum, using keywords such as "stress", "anxiety", and "pressure". After preprocessing, we applied text mining and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to extract topic clusters. We compared one public and one private university to explore institutional contrasts in discourse content and intensity. Academic pressure emerged as a pervasive theme across institutions. Posts from the private university more often referenced scholarships, part-time work, and financial burdens; posts from the public university more frequently discussed coursework, grading, and feedback from instructors. Topic models revealed clusters tied to workload, deadlines, interpersonal tensions, sleep disturbance, and help-seeking. The volume and tone of mental-health discussion differed between institutions, suggesting variation in willingness and ability to engage in mental health conversations online. Forum data combined with computational methods can capture nuanced mental-health dynamics among college students. Findings support multi-level responses: improve timely access to counseling, strengthen peer support, expand financial counseling and emergency aid, and implement early detection (e.g., risk dashboards, peer gatekeeper programs). Universities should adapt interventions to institutional context to foster inclusive, responsive environments for student well-being.

Authors:
Wei-Lin Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
Jen-Hao Chen, National Chengchi University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Wei-Lin Chen is an associate professor in the Center for Teacher Education at National Sun Yat-sen University. His current projects focus on adverse experiences and disadvantaged conditions occurring within family or educational settings.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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