Social changes have led to a shift in the boundary of entering adulthood after adolescence, which is why Arnett defines a new life stage for young people between 18 and 29 years old, calling it emerging adulthood. He describes it as a time of identity exploration, possibilities, instability, self-focus and as feeling between adolescence and adulthood. The changes, new challenges and important decisions that young people have to make during this period can impact their psychological health. The aim of this research was to examine the role of financial independence, work status and the presence of a romantic relationship in the self-perception of adulthood, as well as to determine the predictive value of emerging adulthood characteristics for mental health of young people in Croatia. The study was conducted on 278 participants (65.8% female) aged between 18 and 29 years (M = 23.8; SD = 2.9), who completed a questionnaire on sociodemographic data, the Inventory of Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood (IDEA) and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The results showed that, in addition to age, the combination of financial independence, work status and romantic status as predictors, explain an additional 4.8% of the variance in self-perception of adulthood, but no characteristic was a significant unique predictor. The dimensions of emerging adulthood together significantly explained the variances in three indicators of psychological health, while controlling for the gender: 34.7% of the variance in depression, 21.6% in anxiety and 25.1% in stress. The positive unique predictors of all psychological health indicators were the dimensions Identity Exploration and Instability, which was also the strongest predictor. The negative unique predictors of depression and anxiety were the dimensions Possibilities and Self-Focus, while for stress, it was only the dimension Self-Focus.