The prevalence of perfectionism and positive mental health in undergraduate students

Abstract

The purpose of this cross-sectional survey was to assess the relationship between mental health and perfectionist personality styles within Dalhousie University’s undergraduate psychology program (N = 191). Positive mental health is characterized by high social, emotional, and psychological functioning in everyday life. Perfectionism has traditionally been studied as a correlate of poor mental health, although relatively recent research has offered a reconceptualization wherein the adaptiveness of perfectionism can support positive mental health. In particular, the perfectionist personality style may be categorized as three types: non-perfectionist, maladaptive perfectionist, and adaptive perfectionist. We classified participants based on their perfectionist personality style and assessed the distribution of mental health level and variation of mental health scores across the different perfectionist personality styles. Overall, we found a pattern of high mental health scores in adaptive perfectionists, moderate mental health scores in non-perfectionists, and low mental health scores in maladaptive perfectionists, suggesting that mental health varies systematically with type of perfectionism. Our findings demonstrate that perfectionism can be an adaptive personality style and positively relate to mental health. Our study supports the reconceptualized definition of perfectionism as a potentially adaptive personality style.