Uncovering the mechanism linking education expectation and suicide ideation among students in tertiary education: The mediating role of academic burnout, psychache, and hopelessness

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337831 December 18, 2025 1 / 16 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Morshidi MI, Chew PKH, Suarez L (2025) Uncovering the mechanism linking education expectation and suicide ideation among students in tertiary education: The mediating role of academic burnout, psychache, and hopelessness. PLoS One 20(12): e0337831. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0337831 Editor: Zheng Zhang, South China Normal University, CHINA Received: April 9, 2024 Accepted: November 13, 2025 Published: December 18, 2025 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0337831 Copyright: © 2025 Morshidi et al . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, RESEARCH ARTICLE Uncovering the mechanism linking education expectation and suicide ideation among students in tertiary education: The mediating role of academic burnout, psychache, and hopelessness Mohammad Izzat Morshidi1*, Peter K. H. Chew 2☯, Lidia Suarez2☯ 1 Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom, 2 School of Social and Health Sciences, James Cook University Singapore, Singapore ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * Izzat.morshidi@port.ac.uk Abstract High educational expectations are known risk factors for poor psychological well-

being and suicide risk among tertiary students. However, the underlying mechanism linking high educational expectations to suicide risk is unclear. Additionally, it is also uncertain if suicide risk due to high expectations is universal or culture specific. The current study proposes a model examining the mediating role of academic burnout, psychache, and hopelessness in explaining the link between educational expecta- tions and suicide ideation. The study also examined the model across samples from Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia to examine cultural variances. The study involved 641 tertiary students from Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia who completed self- report measures on perceived educational expectation, psychache, hopelessness, academic burnout, and suicidal ideation. The model was analysed using path analy- sis on AMOS 28. Results revealed that academic burnout was not a significant simple mediator, and the mediating roles of psychache and hopelessness across sources of expectations and samples were mixed. Results revealed a significant mediating effect of academic burnout through psychache and hopelessness on suicide ideation for models with self-expectation and parental expectation in all samples. Overall, our study highlights the complex mechanisms underlying the connection between dif- ferent sources of educational expectations onto suicide ideation among students in higher education. Introduction Suicide, defined as an act carried out by an individual with the expectation of a fatal

outcome (death), ranks among the top five causes of mortality among youths globally [1]. Youth suicide is more troubling when we consider the rates of student suicide.