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 4 / 16 psychological pain and a sense of hopelessness [45]. We also identified academic burnout as both an outcome of high educational expectations (i.e., a demand beyond a student’s control) and a predictor of suicide ideation per the JDC [38]. As academic burnout is characterized by feelings of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and inadequacy, we propose that academic burnout also predicts psychache and hopelessness, subsequently predicting suicidal ideation. Cynical beliefs about the purpose of studying along with the perceived incompetence as a student, signify a pessimistic outlook and a sense of hopelessness toward their academic pursuit [16]. As such, the present study proposes a novel model that integrates the 3ST and the JDC in an attempt to examine the mechanism between educational expectations and suicide ideation through a hypothesised serial mediation model. Through this model, we empirically identified how burnout, psy- chological pain, and hopelessness predict suicide risk with the goal of informing targeted suicide prevention in mitigating the burden of educational expectations among students in tertiary education. We predicted that the relationship between educational expectations and suicide ideation is mediated by i) psychache, ii) hopelessness, and iii) academic burnout respectively. We also predicted a serial mediating effect of iv) academic burn- out and psychache and v) academic burnout and hopelessness on the relationship between educational expectations and

suicide ideation. The model was tested across four sources of expectations (i.e., self, parents, educator/institution, cul- ture), and three sample groups (Malaysia, Singapore, Australia) to examine cross-cultural variations (Fig 1). Method Participants Students who were 18 years and older and were actively enrolled in Malaysian, Singaporean, and Australian universities were sampled through convenience and snowball sampling between July 2022 and December 2022. For the Malaysian sample, 380 responses were collected, where 156 responses were omitted due to missing data, resulting in a final 224 responses (77.7% female, 21% male, and 1.3% prefer not to say). For the Singaporean sample, 261 responses were collected, where 61 responses were omitted due to missing data, resulting in a final 200 responses (77.5% female, 21.5% male, and 1.0% prefer not to say). For the Australian group, 428 responses were collected, where 211 responses were omitted due to missing data, resulting in a final 217 responses (74.2% female, 23.5% male, and 2.3% prefer not to say). The final sample size for each country was adequate for a moderate effect size in regression models [46]. Further demo- graphic details can be found in Table 1. Instruments Perceived educational expectations. The Higher Educational Expectation Scale [13] is a 28-item scale that examines perceived educational expectations among tertiary students across four domains: self, parents, educators, and culture using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly agree) to 5 (Strongly disagree), with higher scores indicating

Fig 1. Hypothesized serial mediation model. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0337831.g001