Research On Intervention Of College Students' Mental Health Literacy Based On Mental Health Courses

In recent years,the causes of mental problems are becoming more diverse,as the burden on the public to treat mental disorder is increasing.Previous studies have also found that the public has a poor understanding of psychological knowledge,a negative attitude towards people with mental disorders and a weak willingness to seek psychological help.In the face of such a realistic basis,it is urgent to improve the mental health literacy level in order to better prevent and overcome the related problems caused by these psychological barriers.Among the many ways to improve national mental health literacy,the most effective way is through education,especially school education.Based on this thinking,this study took college students' mental health education class as the carrier to test the intervention effect of education approach on college students'mental health literacy.This study is a quasi-experimental design.Participants in this study were freshmen in a college.They were divided into two groups using random cluster sampling.One group was an experimental group with a total of 779 people.The other group was a control group with a total of 355 people.The independent variable is whether to carry out mental health education curriculum teaching intervention for the purpose of improving mental health literacy.The dependent variables were self-reported mental health literacy,self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems,and psychological help-seeking attitude.The teaching intervention plan comes from the textbook "Psychological Health of College Students" edited by Jiang Guangrong.The textbook has 12 chapters in order to improve the mental health literacy of college students.It selects 8 teaching themes and designs a 16-hour teaching plan.The front-line teachers will be trained to learn these psychological literacy interventions.Before and after the teaching intervention,all subjects were required to fill in questionnaires such as mental health literacy,self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems and attitude towards psychological help.After the intervention,the changes of variables such as college students' mental health literacy,their self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems,and their attitude towards psychological help before and after the teaching intervention,as well as the relationship among them,were examined.The results of the study found that:(1)There were significant gender differences in freshmen's mental health literacy,self-efficacy and psychological help-seeking attitude in handling psychological problems(p<0.05),women's performance in those aspects was significantly better than men's.Mental health literacy and psychological help-seeking attitudes have significant differences in the gender(p<0.05);Mental health literacy and psychological help-seeking attitude were significantly different in students' origin(p<0.05),the mental health literacy and psychological help-seeking attitude of college students in the township and above areas were significantly higher than those in the rural areas,while the self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems was not significantly different in students' origin.(2)the self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems partly mediates between mental health literacy and psychological help-seeking attitude.(3)Mental health education course teaching intervention for the purpose of improving mental health literacy has a good intervention effect on college students' mental health literacy and self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems(p<0.05),bur the intervention effect on the attitude of psychological help was not significant.After the intervention,their understanding of mental health,understanding of mental illness,behaviors and skills to solve mental illness,and behaviors and skills to maintain mental health were significantly improved,while the intervention effect was not obvious in the attitude to deal with mental illness and attitude to maintain mental health.Based on the findings of this study,three conclusions can be drawn:(1)Gender and birthplace affect college students' mental health literacy,self-efficacy and psychological help-seeking attitude in dealing with psychological problems.(2)Self-efficacy in dealing with psychological issues plays a part of the mediating role between mental health literacy and psychological help-seeking attitude.In other words,the higher the level of individual mental health literacy,it will stronger his/her self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems,and then affects their psychological attitude to help become more positive.(3)The intervention of mental health education courses for the purpose of improving mental health literacy has a good intervention effect on university students'mental health literacy and self-efficacy in dealing with psychological problems,and the intervention effect on psychological help-seeking attitude is not significant.