Exhaustion among university students: A cross-sectional study of self-esteem, social support, gender, physical activity and being in nature as predictors

Sammanfattning: The purpose of the study was to examine how common exhaustion was among students of Lund’s University. An additional aim was to investigate to what extent the factors self-esteem, gender, social support, physical activity and being in nature could predict exhaustion in the sample. A cross-sectional web-survey consisting of Karolinska Exhaustion Disorder Scale (KEDS), Rosenberg’s Self-esteem Scale (RSES), The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Saltin Grimby Physical Activity Scale (SGPALS), 4 questions concerning being in nature, as well as demographic questions were used. The sample consisted of 253 participants (76.3% women and 23.3% men), most were students of the Social Sciences Faculty and the Faculty of Medicine. The results showed that self-esteem, social support from friends, gender and physical activity were significant predictors of exhaustion. Self-esteem was clearly the strongest predictor. 33% of the participants had exhaustion scores above cutoff, indicating high levels of exhaustion. There were significant differences in level of exhaustion between women and men, with higher levels of exhaustion among women. The results to a great extent corroborated previous research; however longitudinal designs are requested to investigate the direction of the associations.