Cultures in the UK and the Republic of Ireland are similar but there are some differences. For example the British culture is highly individualistic whereas the Irish culture is not so much individualistic. Success-drivenness is also stronger in the British culture, whereas Irish value quality of life more.
In our study, we looked at the mental health of students in both countries and saw if these cultural differences could be one way to explain the differences in mental health.
We surveyed 400 students in total in the same subject then compared the scores. We chose social work students because (a) this student group could respond to the mental health survey honestly as they were educated about mental health, and (b) we were able to access many students in this subject.
The results were that UK students reported less shame about mental health, and better mental health than Irish students. More details are in Table 1 in the paper.
We discussed how cultural differences can explain these mental health differences. Relative to the UK culture, Irish culture is more collectivistic. Collectivistic culture tends to show high shame scores, because shame is a rather social construct existing in relation to others. This strong shame may help explain why Irish students reported poor mental health.
In a motivation theory (Self-Determination Theory), it is well-known that extrinsic motivation is associated with poor mental health (e.g., high stress). This is probably understandable to many people: people who are highly focused on external recognition tend to feel high stress and anxiety etc. A cultural characteristic of success-drivenness is based on extrinsic motivation. Between the UK and ROI, the UK culture is more towards success-drivenness, than the Irish culture. But the mental health scores showed Irish students had poorer mental health than UK students. Cultural response biases may help clarify this (e.g., individualism and self-ehnahcement). And other factors e.g., curriculum differences between the 2 countries etc. need to be explored.
Reference
Kotera, Y., Tsuda-McCaie, F., Maughan, G. & Green, P. (2021). Cross-cultural comparison of mental health in social work students between UK and Ireland: Mental health shame and selfcompassion. British Journal of Social Work. DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bcab240
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