<p>【Objective】As primary prevention against the decline of mental health in college students, life skills education is considered to be effective. For the effective life skills education, it is required to implement programs according to personal characteristics of life skills and states of mental health. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the characteristics of life skills and states of mental health in college students to obtain the basic knowledge for the effective life skills education.</p><p>【Methods】Subjects were 561college students (233 males, 328 females, mean age:19.8 ± 1.3 years) at 3 colleges in metropolitan area. Daily Life Skills Scale for College Students (DLS: consisted of 8 factors, i.e., “planning”, “knowledge summarization”, “self-esteem”, “positive thinking”, “intimacy”, “leadership”, “empathy”, and “interpersonal manner”) and Japanese Version of General Health Questionnaire 12 (GHQ) were used to assess life skills and mental health respectively.</p><p>【Results】Cluster analysis based on DLS scores showed that the subjects could be classified into 4 clusters for males and females respectively (Male: M1-M4, Female: F1-F4). In addition, one way analysis of variance with the clusters as an independent variable and with GHQ scores as a dependent variable showed differences in states of mental health among these clusters. Approximate tendencies of the subjects in each cluster were shown as follows: </p><p>M1 & F1: all of life skills were low, mental health was poor in comparison with the other clusters.</p><p>M2: “planning”, “positive thinking” and “interpersonal manner” skills were high, “knowledge summarization”, “self-esteem”, “intimacy”, “leadership”, and “empathy” skills were low, mental health was not good in comparison with the other clusters.</p><p>F2: “planning”, “knowledge summarization”, “self-esteem”, “positive thinking”, “intimacy”, and “leadership” skills were high, “empathy” and “interpersonal manner” skills were low, mental health was not good in comparison with the other clusters.</p><p>M3 & F3: “empathy” and “interpersonal manner” skills were high, “self-esteem” and “positive thinking” skills were low, mental health was not good in comparison with other clusters.</p><p>M4 & F4: all of life skills were high, mental health was good in comparison with the other clusters. </p><p>【Conclusion】These results suggested that the considerations for both the characteristics of life skills and the state of mental health, which induced by each cluster, were effective to implement the life skills education.</p>