Mental health as a predictor of psychological wellbeing and quality of life among working women in Saudi Arabia: a structural equation modeling study

Background Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 has driven a significant rise in women's labor force participation — from under 20% to 36% within a decade — amid new professional demands for the workforce. Structural equation modeling (SEM) studies linking mental health, psychological wellbeing (PWB), and quality of life (QoL) within a single model remain scarce for this population. Grounded in the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model and drawing on the WHO-5, Ryff's Psychological Wellbeing Scale, and the WHOQOL-BREF, this cross-sectional study examined whether mental health (MH) is associated with psychological wellbeing (PWB) and quality of life (QoL), and whether PWB mediates the MH–QoL relationship, among working women in Saudi Arabia. Methods A bilingual online questionnaire was administered to 549 working women (age range 18–60; 58.7% government sector; 63.2% with a bachelor's degree, 88.9% a bachelor's degree or higher). The instrument assessed six MH dimensions, seven PWB dimensions (including a culturally added Societal Empowerment dimension), and eight QoL domains (including culturally extended Professional and Religious domains), with internal consistency α = 0.84–0.89. A higher-order confirmatory factor analysis established the three-construct measurement structure, followed by an SEM with maximum-likelihood estimation and robust standard errors. Results MH predicted both PWB ( β = 0.91, p < 0.001, R² = 0.83) and QoL ( β = 0.88, p < 0.001, R² = 0.77). A bias-corrected accelerated bootstrap test (1,000 resamples) — a statistical technique for testing whether an indirect pathway is reliable — indicated an indirect effect of PWB on the MH–QoL association consistent with mediation (indirect β = 0.77, 95% CI [0.58, 0.98]; direct β = 0.11, p = 0.24, ns). Model fit was suboptimal (CFI = 0.81; RMSEA = 0.118; SRMR = 0.09), a limitation of the parcel structure discussed herein. All findings are interpreted as associative, not causal, given the cross-sectional design. Conclusion These results suggest that workplace wellness initiatives aligned with Saudi Vision 2030 may be most effective when investing in eudaimonic wellbeing — particularly through structured PWB-building workshops and workplace psychological counseling services targeting self-acceptance, environmental mastery, and purpose in life — for future intervention research linking mental health to life-domain flourishing.