Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 1285-1291
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.185 1285
I
NFLUENCE OF
P
HYSICAL
E
DUCATION
I
NTERVENTION ON
P
SYCHOLOGICAL
H
EALTH OF
C
OLLEGE
S
TUDENTS
Ling Chen
Abstract
Both physical health and mental health are important for the growth of college students. This paper attempts to disclose the influence of physical education (PE) intervention on the psychological health of college students. First, a questionnaire survey was conducted on college students of Shandong province, China, on their psychological health conditions. Next, a contrastive experiment was carried out, with one group of subjects receiving PE intervention. After the experiment, the subjects received another questionnaire survey on psychological health. The results show that more than 45% of college students have psychological health problems; PE intervention can improve the sensitivity and response speed of the motor system via the feeling and perception of the subjects, thus enhancing the psychological health. This research provides a reference for promoting the psychological health education in Chinese colleges.
Key words: Psychological Health, Physical Education (PE), Self-Cognition, Intervention, Motor System.
Received: 18-04-19 | Accepted: 20-08-19
INTRODUCTION
In today's school education, physical education has been recognized for cultivating college students' sports skills, enhancing body coordination, and strengthening physical fitness (Lerdal, Gay, & Bonsaksen, 2017). College students are in an important stage of the development and improvement of psychological health and physical fitness. In this process, their gradually formed thinking, emotions and wills would endure great pressure, which will have a negative influence on their psychological health (Blythe & White, 2012). With the rapid social development and the accelerated pace of life, people become more demanding of their lifestyles, their material life and spiritual life are of higher level, and the pressure of social employment and interpersonal communication
Xinyang Normal University, College of Physical Education, Xinyang 464000, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
is increasing as well. As a result, college students would produce psychological health problems such as anxiety and depression, and it will have a great influence on the study, work and life of college students in the long run (Leigh, Mishra, & Sonia, 2015). From the perspective of psychological health, the individual's psychological health includes four aspects: psychological quality, physical quality, social adaptability and moral development level. All aspects must be ensured sounded and complete before can be regarded as psychologically healthy (Green, Beveridge, & Evans et al., 2018). Studies have shown that long-term physical training or physical exercise can produce good emotional benefits, which can effectively improve psychological environment, alleviate psychological stress and tension, and reduce the level of psychological anxiety (Zhang, Chen, Mccubbin et al., 2011). At present, we should learn to pursue a comprehensive education method that combines “sports and health”, and pay attention to the teaching of two levels: the physical health and psychological health of the
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students. Students can act as the dominator in the teaching environment, and enjoy the physical and mental pleasure brought by sports training (Wynaden, Heslop, Heslop et al., 2016; Mugisha, Hert, & Stubbs, 2017). Physical education can help students regulate emotions, enhance their willpower, promote their intellectual development, and improve their social adaptability (Kurtze, Eikemo, & Kamphuis, 2013). A large number of studies have shown that there is a significant positive correlation between sports and psychological health. Physical education promotes the development of college students' physical skills, thereby promoting the development of the nervous system, and providing a solid material guarantee for the development of psychological functions (Breslau, Leckman-Westin, Yu et al., 2017). This paper uses questionnaires to investigate the psychological health conditions of college students, and adopts the physical education method to explore its improving effect on the psychological health of college students, so as to provide a reference for college students’ psychological health education and the development of their health.
CURRENT STATUS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS' PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
In recent years, the state has successively issued documents to further strengthen and improve the psychological health education of college students, and colleges and universities have successively carried out various psychological health education activities, further illustrating the concern of the state and colleges on the psychological health problems of college students (Terry & Cutter, 2013). Psychological health is a dynamic and changing process, its result is relative. Psychological health conditions belong to the abilities and efforts of endogenous and exogenous dimensions, they are unstable and uncontrollable (Melo, De Bruin, & Francisco et al., 2016). Some researchers have done a few statistics, currently, the proportion of college students with psychological health problems exceeds 45%, which has doubled the survey data of ten years ago (Happell, Platania-Phung, & Scott, 2011).
College students with healthy psychology must have a correct outlook on life and lofty ideals, and they have a relatively stable outlook on life and a sound personality, they can control
their actions and desires, can combine their goals and ideas, and can maintain psychological balance by their own. In simple words, they have good abilities to deal with affairs, good interpersonal relationships, and good personalities. At present, we divide the psychological health into seven dimensions: somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility and psychosis. Figure 1 is the survey results of the status of each psychological health dimension of college students, from the figure we can see that, in general, the psychological health conditions of college students are not optimistic. The proportion of students with obsessive-compulsive symptoms is the highest, followed by the interpersonal sensitivity and depression dimensions.
Figure 1
.
Investigation on psychological
health of college students from different
dimensions
PHYSICAL EDUCATION INTERVENTION ON PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Relationship between physical education and psychological health
Sports can enhance self-efficacy. From the perspective of physiological psychology, individuals have a central nervous system that promotes their physical and mental pleasure. Sports can make the individual achieve an optimal nervous system activation level, thus making the individual have a happy feeling inside. Figure 2 shows the psychological health development model of college students. There are two types of psychological health: benign state and malignant state, which are related to the status of the body and the stimulation of biochemical stressors. The factors that are related to the psychological health include the cognitive ability, comprehension ability and control ability; and its sources of resistance to the malignant state include psychological quality, social support, health knowledge and lifestyle, etc.
INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION INTERVENTION ON PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH OF COLLEGE STUDENTS 1287
Figure 2
.
Psychological health development model of college students
Physical and biochemical stressors
Body weakness and health risk factors
Stressors in psychological health
Tension
Metabolic intervention
Benign state Malignant state
Health-disease continuum
Relevant factors Cognitive ability Comprehension ability
Control ability
General resistance source Psychological quality
Social support Health knowledge
Life style
As important carriers for students to receive physical education, schools now pay more attention to the coordinated development of students' overall physical and psychological qualities. Physical education and psychological health training are both comprehensive educational methods that are continuously explored and practiced in colleges and universities. Taking the overall psychological health level of students as the starting point, physical education has integrated the sports cognition, physical quality training and sports thinking exercise of college students. Moreover, the unique teaching forms and characteristics of physical education are conducive to improving the psychological health of college students. Figure 3 shows the psychological health benefits of physical education, including self-cognition, self-emotion and self-personality.
Figure 3
.
Psychological health benefits of
physical education
Psychological health benefits of physical education
Self-cognition Self-emotion Self-personality
Physical education intervention design and process
The method of physical education intervention has been approved by educational theory experts and college PE teachers, and it follows the standards of PE curriculum. The design of the intervention method includes three parts: theoretical teaching, mental health lectures, and physical training. Table 1 shows the specific content setting of physical education intervention. The curriculum includes the
practice course and the theory course. The practice course is set according to the teaching tasks and the characteristics of students, it takes comprehensive intervention as the main content, and selects physical education content that students are easy to accept and interested in, so as to mobilize the students’ participation initiative; the content of theory course includes four parts: learn to relax, anxiety adjustment,
self-confidence establishment, and
psychological scene play, which can help college students experience the state of mind and body during relaxation, and use lectures to teach students the methods to enhance self-efficacy and to deal with anxiety.
EFFECT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
INTERVENTION ON COLLEGE STUDENTS'
PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Research objects and methods
In this study, the survey of the psychological health of college students was conducted using both the questionnaire method and the experiment method. The basic conditions of the subjects are shown in Table 2, all subjects are college students from Shandong Province, China. The questionnaire survey was conducted for two times, the first time is the questionnaire for the psychological health of college students, and the second time is the questionnaire for the psychological health of college students and the questionnaire for the experimental group (intervention target) set in the subjects. The experiment performed physical education intervention on the subjects according to Table 1, the intervention time was 16 class hours, the intervention intensity was moderate, and the intervention mode was small group intervention.
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Table 1.
Specific content setting of physical education intervention
Course category Course frequency Course content Activity objectives
Practice course
The course was set according to teaching tasks and the characteristics
of students
Track and field, repeated jump, gymnastics, martial
arts, etc.
Choose the content of physical education that students are easy to accept and interested in, mobilize students' participation initiative, and combine theory courses to give priority to
comprehensive intervention.
Theory course
1 Learn to relax
Help students to experience relaxed physical and mental state and teach them effective ways to deal
with anxiety
2 Anxiety regulation Lecture on topics before midterm or final exams 3 Self-confidence
establishment
Give lectures on ways and means to improve self-efficacy
4 Psychological scene
play Express the lessons through scene play
Table 2.
Basic information of the subjects
Item Category Quantity Proportion
Gender Male 75 50%
Female 75 50%
Major Science and engineering 102 68%
Liberal arts 48 32%
Family sources Countryside 63 42%
Town 87 58%
Family poverty Yes 26 17.33%
No 124 82.67%
The data obtained were statistically processed and organized using SPSS. The self-rating scale for college students' psychological health standards adopted the self-rating scale of mental symptoms, using a 5-point scoring system, and higher score indicates more serious mental symptoms. Physical education interventions include exercises for cardio-respiratory endurance, muscle strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition, etc. The intervention measures are designed to develop the body, improve health, and enhance physical fitness.
RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Physical education intervention is a physical training method that is conducted under the guidance of teachers. It mainly enhances college students’ exercise awareness, improves their collaborative ability, alleviates stress, relaxes moods, and improves their concentration. Human beings are initiative and active in the process of learning. From the perspective of psychological cognition, physical education intervention can improve the sensitivity of the nervous motor system of the exerciser through the feeling and perception of the exerciser and
the response speed of the motor system of the body.
Figure 4
.
Comparison between the
psychological health level of the subjects
before the intervention and the national
norm
Figure 4 shows the comparison between the psychological health level of the subjects before the intervention and the national norm. It can be clearly seen that compared with the national
INFLUENCE OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION INTERVENTION ON PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH OF COLLEGE STUDENTS 1289
norm, the psychological health status of the subjects is not optimistic, the scores of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anxiety, hostility and psychosis are all higher than those of the national norm, and college students’ psychological status needs to be improved. The psychological health status of female students is worse than that of male students, and as the grade increases, the scores of anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity become higher, and the subjects present heavier psychological stress. Through the investigation of psychological health status, it is found that the psychological development of college students in Shandong Province is slower than their physiological development, the ideal and the reality of their psychological development are full of contradictions. And the psychological development of college students has the characteristics of plastic and transitional. Furthermore, for the psychological health of college students, there is a contradiction between the psychosis dimension and the obsessive-compulsive symptoms dimension, they are interdependent but are separated, which is mainly caused by interpersonal relationships. College students generally lack self-confidence, they are unwilling to interact with others or fear to communicate with others.
Figure 5
.
Comparison between the
psychological health level of the subjects
after the intervention and the national
norm
Figure 5 shows the comparison between the psychological health level of the subjects after the intervention and the national norm. It can be seen that the psychological health status of the
subjects after the intervention has achieved great progress, the average values of each dimensions of the psychological health of the subjects are all lower than the national norm, especially the anxiety dimension and the psychosis dimension, the improvement is the most significant. Figure 6 is a comparison of the psychological health symptoms self-rating of the subjects before and after the physical education intervention, it can be clearly seen that the psychological health status of the subjects after physical education intervention is far better than that before the physical education intervention, the differences in the dimensions of somatization, anxiety and psychosis are significant.
Figure 6. Comparison of the psychological health symptoms self-rating of the subjects before and after the physical education intervention
Figure 7. Comparison of psychological health symptoms of the subjects before and after physical education intervention
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Figure 8. Life satisfaction of subjects before and after physical education intervention
0 10 20 30 40 50
Very satisfied Satisfied
General Dissatisfied Very dissatisfied
P
ro
p
o
rt
io
n
/%
Before intervention After intervention
Figure 7 is a comparison of the subjects’ psychological health symptoms self-rating before and after physical education intervention. The subjects’ psychological health status after physical education intervention is far better than that before physical education intervention. Figure 8 is a survey of life satisfaction status of subjects before and after physical education intervention. It can be clearly seen that after the intervention of physical education, the subjects’ satisfied degree and very satisfied degree have been improved, and their dissatisfied degree and very dissatisfied degree have been greatly decreased. In conclusion, physical education intervention can greatly improve the psychological health of college students.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper used questionnaires to investigate the psychological health conditions of college students, and adopted physical education methods to explore its improving effect on the psychological health of college students. The specific conclusions are as follows:
(1) According to the survey results of the various dimensions of college students' psychological health, the overall psychological health status of college students is not optimistic, the proportion of students with obsessive-compulsive symptoms is the highest, followed by the interpersonal sensitivity and depression dimensions.
(2) The specific content of physical education
intervention includes practice course and theory course. The practice course is set according to the teaching tasks and the characteristics of students, it takes comprehensive intervention as the main content, and selects physical education content that students are easy to accept and interested in, so as to mobilize the students’ participation initiative; the content of theory course includes four parts: learn to relax, anxiety adjustment, self-confidence establishment, and psychological scene play.
(3) Physical education intervention can greatly improve the psychological health status of college students. After the intervention of physical education, the psychological health status of the young people has made great progress. After the intervention, the average values of each dimension of college students’ psychological health are all lower than those of the national norm.
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