The effects of social support and parental autonomy support on the mental well-being of university students: the mediating role of a parent–child relationship

The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the complex response techniques employed to halt its spread, are both detrimental to mental and emotional well-being. Students’ lives have been damaged by social alienation and self-isolation. These effects must be detected, analyzed, and dealt with to make sure the well-being of individuals, specifically students. This research examines the impact of parent–child relationships, parental autonomy support, and social support on enhancing students’ mental well-being using data collected from post-COVID-19. The Potential participants were students from several universities in Pakistan. For this reason, we chose Pakistan’s Punjab province, with 8 prominent institutions, as the primary focus for data collection. A questionnaire was created to gather information from 355 students. For descriptive statistics, SPSS was used, while AMOS structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. The findings revealed that social support on mental well-being (standardized β = 0.43, t = 7.57, p < 0.01) and parental autonomy support was significant and positively related to mental well-being (standardized β = 0.31, t = 5.016, p < 0.01), and predicted parent–child relationships. Furthermore, the parent–child relationship strongly mediated the association between social support, parental autonomy support, and students’ mental well-being. This research proposes that good social support and parental autonomy support improve parent–children relationships and contribute to students’ mental well-being.