To investigate the mental health status of college students in Shanxi Province during the COVID-19 pandemic, explore the influencing factors, and put forward management countermeasures, in order to realize the healthy development of college students' psychological health.

Stratified random sampling survey method and structural equation model research method were adopted, and a questionnaire was administered to 3900 students in a college in Shanxi Province.

According to the results of the questionnaire survey, compared with the national youth norm, the factors with higher scores among Shanxi University students were obsessive-compulsive, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobia anxiety, and psychoticism, and the factors with lower scores were paranoid ideation, somatization, and interpersonal sensitivity. The results of structural equation model analysis of mental health state showed that there were three factors influencing the mental health status of college students in Shanxi Province: environmental factors, social support factors, and health management factors, with path coefficients of 0.34, 0.23, and -0.50, respectively. Environmental factors also influence the mental health status of college students through social support factors and health management factors, representing the most important influencing factor.

Environmental factors and social support factors make the scores of mental health status of college students deviate from the national youth norm, and health management factors can improve the mental health status of college students. Therefore, schools, society, and families should give full play to the role of health management during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the healthy growth of college students.