Indonesian university students’ knowledge, attitudes, and associated factors toward mental illness have been identified. This study revealed a slight difference between knowledge and attitudes toward mental illness. Although 50.7% of the participants had good mental illness knowledge, only 53% had favorable attitudes toward individuals with mental illness. Such factors, including never studying psychology or psychiatry, and having a family history of mental illness, were significant risk factors for poor knowledge of the mental illness. To our knowledge, this study is the first to reveal that self-diagnosing among university students in Indonesia contributes to poor knowledge and unfavorable attitudes toward people with mental illness.

One of the significant risk factors associated with poor knowledge of mental illness was not having studied psychology or psychiatry formally. In line with previous studies, those who received formal education about psychiatry, such as medical students, tend to have higher knowledge of mental health [8, 15]. Our result emphasizes the need to improve students’ mental health literacy and mental health education in university curriculums.

Our study found that self-diagnosis is a significant risk factor for poor knowledge and unfavorable attitudes toward mental illness. Self-diagnosing individuals often have inaccurate or incomplete knowledge about mental health conditions. It is crucial to highlight this finding because self-diagnosis may lead to a perpetuation of stereotypes and stigma surrounding certain mental health conditions. This happens when individuals use inaccurate or highly biased information to self-diagnose, which could result in negative assumptions about individuals with certain mental health conditions. Moreover, a previous study has reported that self-diagnosis among Indonesian university students can lead to mental health distress and interference with daily activities [16].

We observed that participants with a family history of mental illness did not make them well knowledgeable about mental illness. Contrary to our result, another study reported that those with a family history of mental illness tend to have good knowledge and attitudes toward mental illness [17, 18]. In fact, several Indonesian societies often over-stigmatize people with mental illness, and the discriminatory practice in the form of pasung (a practice of confining and detaining mentally ill individuals for months to years) still exists today. Pasung is fairly commonly carried out by their family members, especially those living in rural areas and poorly educated [2, 7, 19]. As iron stocks, social controls, and agents of change, university students who are well-educated about mental health might be engaged in addressing this condition by promoting mental health awareness and reducing stigma in society.

Interestingly, our study revealed that participants with a lower family income had more favorable attitudes toward mental illness. This finding contradicts a previous study that demonstrated a negative association between socioeconomic status and attitudes toward mental illness because they tend to have negative emotions, high survival pressures, and poor social and psychological skills [13]. Meanwhile, a similar study demonstrated that income is not associated with attitudes toward mental illness [9]. However, the present study was conducted in a specific cultural context. Different cultures and settings of the study might have variated results.

A similar finding to Hartini et al. [7], the current study also found a very weak negative correlation between knowledge and attitudes toward mental illness. Nevertheless, this result suggests that improving knowledge may lead to more favorable attitudes toward individuals with mental illness, particularly among university students.

This study has some limitations, such as only including university students from a single university, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations. This study used a cross-sectional design, making it difficult to establish causality or the direction of the observed associations. However, our study also has several strengths, including this is the first study in Indonesia to assess university students’ self-diagnoses of mental illness, providing valuable insight into their perceptions of their own mental health. Our study used a comprehensive questionnaire that covered a wide range of topics related to mental illness, which allowed us to obtain detailed information on the participants’ knowledge and attitudes. Also, this study provides an important baseline for future studies on mental health in Indonesia, highlighting the need for interventions to improve knowledge and attitudes toward mental illness among university students.