Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 333-339
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.245 333
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND T
EACHING THEORY OF MENTAL HEALTH
EDUCATION IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Junsheng Guo
Abstract
In modern education, colleges and universities should teach students in accordance of their aptitude, in the light of their mental health. This paper empirically analyzes the demographic features and mental health status of college students, and their recognition of the mental health education system, and discusses how to optimize mental health education curriculum and construct the theoretical basis of mental health education system. The research data were collected through a questionnaire survey. The result show that it is possible to identify the problems with the mental health education system through analyzing the demographic features and mental health status of college students; the merits and defects of the system can be tested by assessing the students’ cognition, internalization and comprehensive quality; the curriculum design of mental health must fully consider the theory of positive psychology. The research results provide a good reference for the curriculum design and teaching theory of mental health education in colleges and universities.
Key words: Curriculum Design, mental health, teaching theory, colleges and universities. Received: 05-03-19 | Accepted: 08-08-19
INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development of economy and society, college students not only face the stress of family and society, but also take up the cause of building the country's future, which means that contemporary college students should have not only excellent comprehensive quality, but also healthy, positive psychological quality and adequate personality (Ketchen, Gaddis, Heinze et al., 2015). Therefore, colleges and universities are facing new challenges, especially the mental health education should adapt to the social changes and physiological and psychological changes of college students (Schwartz, 2006). With the acceleration of the socialist modernization process, profound changes have taken place in mental health education for college students, which requires colleges and
School of tourism, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
universities to expand the depth and breadth of mental health quality education (Rogers, 1941).
Mental health education has been studied abroad for a long time. James, a famous American psychologist, suggested that psychological research should be effectively combined with educational research, which promotes countries around the world to pay more attention to the research on teaching of psychology. It is universally acknowledged that enabling students to have healthy and positive psychological quality is conducive to their healthy development and plays a positive role in the formation of their correct social values (Feifel, 1958). In the 1940s, modern mental health education in colleges and universities emerged in the United States, and the concept expanded rapidly in Europe, Japan and other countries. The theory related to mental health education system has become relatively complete in the continuous research and practice (Phelps, Bray, & Kearney, 2017). After decades of development, mental health education has become an important part of
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education system abroad. When carrying out study on mental health education, a lot of foreign scholars go to colleges and universities, approach the reality of education and closely integrate with students' mental health dynamics, and thus obtain many outstanding results (Brunsma, Brown, & Placier, 2013). Currently, more than 90% of colleges and universities in the United States have full-time counseling centers and independent mental health education goals and programs (Wittman, 1940). In addition, colleges and universities in the UK have advanced mental health education, and provide senior psychologists for students' mental health education, so as to ensure the quality of education and the comprehensive quality of students (Hargrove, 1991). In order to ensure the professionalism and quality of mental health education, the UK strictly controls the qualification of mental health education experts, who should not only receive strict training, but also have to be experienced before they can engage in mental health education (Hartley, 2013). The studies on mental health education in colleges and universities in China mainly focus on two topics, one is to study how higher education corrects college students' irrational world outlook and values; the other is to study various factors affecting students' mental health from the psychological perspective, so as to address students' mental problems (Tol, Patel, Tomlinson et al., 2012). Studies on mental health education in developed countries is not only early, but also relatively mature, and a lot of results are worth learning from (Piatt,Munetz, & Ritter, 2010). Although the studies on mental health education in China is relatively late, they are basically in line with the actual situation of colleges and universities in China. Targeted study has been carried out on the current psychological problems of most students and the current situation of psychological curriculum in colleges and universities, providing reference for the design of mental health curriculum and the research of teaching theory in colleges and universities in China (Ratanasiripong & Rodriguez, 2011).
Taking the mental health education in colleges and universities as the object of study, the author uses empirical analysis, questionnaire survey and other research methods to carry out a case study of a university on the demographic characteristics, mental health status and recognition of mental health education system
of the students, and further discusses the current situation of mental health education system. It provides reference for studies on curriculum design and teaching theory of mental health education in colleges and universities, which is conducive to the optimization of mental health education in colleges and universities and the formation of good psychological quality and adequate personality of college students.
AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT SITUATION OF MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION CURRICULUM
In order to better understand the mental health education system in colleges and universities, the author uses questionnaire survey to investigate the demographic characteristics and mental state of the students who have received mental health education and their recognition of the mental health education system. A total of 500 questionnaires are sent out, and 97% of them are collected, which are analyzed by the quantitative and qualitative methods. Due to the number of questionnaires collected, the results of the survey are of great reference value. The following are the results of mathematical statistics on the questionnaire data.
Demographic characteristics of respondents
In order to ensure the comprehensiveness of the questionnaire survey, the author not only sends questionnaires to students but also to counselors, administrative staff members and lecturers, expecting that the survey can reflect the attitudes and opinions of various levels and perspectives. The demographic characteristics mainly include gender, year in college, major, occupation and other aspects.
As shown in Figure 1, demographic characteristics of respondents are reflected from gender structure and their year in college. In terms of the gender structure, the male-female ratio is somewhat unbalanced, with males accounting for 38% and females 62%. This is in line with the actual ratio of males to females in the university surveyed. Besides, it suggests that females are more sensitive to mental health education and are more willing to look at their mental state rationally. From the perspective of year in college, most of them are freshmen, sophomores and juniors, while the rest are administrative staff members, lecturers and
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND TEACHING THEORY OF MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES 335
counselors. The proportion of sophomores and juniors is the highest, accounting for 34% and 36% respectively, followed by freshmen, accounting for 19%, while the proportion of lecturers, counselors and administrative staff members only account for 11%. The reason lies in that the main sophomores are facing stress from study, student organizations and interpersonal relationship, while juniors are facing stress from graduation and employment planning, and they are willing to use the university's mental health education resources to address their psychological problems. Although freshmen have strong curiosity and some enthusiasm for participation, they have less psychological trouble and are in the exploratory stage of university. The teaching staff tend to show their interest in the content of the questionnaire only when they are involved in curriculum design and teaching theory research.
Figure 1
.
The gender and grade structure of
the respondents
As shown in Figure 2 and 3, demographic characteristics are reflected by the proportion of respondents' majors and positions: the respondents are from various majors of various schools, but the proportion varies from major to major. Students majoring in Psychology accounts for 32%, Sociology 16%, Ideology and Politics 14%, Education 18%, Law 3%, Public Administration 7%, Human Resources 3%, Art Education 2%, and other majors 8%. Psychology, Sociology, Ideology and Politics, Education and other majors involve mental health education courses, so students in these majors know how to solve psychological problems or seek help; however, students who have not learned psychological knowledge are more likely to solve problems by themselves or seek external psychological counseling when they are under
great psychological stress. In addition, students are the majority, accounting for 86%, counselors and administrative staff members account for 10%, and lecturers account for 4%. The reason is that the university's mental health education system mainly serves students, while counselors and administrative staff members are mainly responsible for developing and arranging courses, while lecturers are mainly responsible for imparting course contents to students. The above data show that we can consider how to construct and improve the mental health education system from multiple perspectives and levels.
Figure 2
.
Professional distribution of
respondents
Figure 3
.
Distribution of posts of
respondents
Psychological state of respondents
This part mainly investigates the students' psychological state after learning the mental health curriculum and related theories and receiving the mental health education from three aspects: whether there are psychological problems, whether there is psychological stress at present, the degree and source of current psychological stress. It also reflects the effectiveness and shortcomings of implementing the mental health education system.
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Figure 4
.
Psychological problems and
psychological stress of students
As shown in Figure 4, 87% of the students think that they have both psychological problem and stress, while only 13% of the students think that they have no psychological problem or stress. It can be seen from this that although the university offers mental health education courses and psychological counseling services, the questionnaire survey data shows that the effectiveness of mental health education is far from satisfactory.
Figure 5
.
Source of students' psychological
stress
As shown in Figure 5, the degree and source of psychological stress of students are different and diverse, mainly from themselves, physiology, personal development, family, interpersonal relationship, sentiment, emotion, environmental adaptation and other factors. Among them, students' personal development,
emotion and interpersonal relationship are the most important sources of psychological stress, accounting for 33%, 26% and 15% respectively. Personal development accounting for the majority is mainly related to the juniors accounting for 36% of the total. Juniors generally face the stress of graduation and employment. In terms of emotional problems, 26% of the students are troubled by emotional factors. College students generally attach great importance to emotional problems, and they are unable to extricate themselves from emotional disputes in love. In addition, the immaturity of their ability and skills to deal with emotional problems easily leads to great psychological and emotional crisis. In addition, interpersonal relationship is another important factor for college students to have psychological problems besides emotion. Some college students worry about losing face and tend to make irrational promises and do something irrational to deal with interpersonal relationship, once failed, they are easy to be hit and lose friendship. Family factor and self-factor are also important sources of psychological stress, accounting for 12%. High expectations from family and self-idealization of students can lead to excessive psychological stress, which will develop into serious psychological problems. In fact, no matter what kind of psychological problems and stress, as long as the students are mature enough and the university's comprehensive mental health education system, no stress will be threatening.
Figure
6
.
Solutions
to
students'
psychological problems
As shown in Figure 6, when facing psychological stress and problems, students
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND TEACHING THEORY OF MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES 337
mainly adopt solutions like self-support, seeking help from friends, teachers or parents, psychological counseling and psychotherapy. 87% of students think they have psychological stress and problems. When asked how to face psychological stress and problems, 39% of students solve them by themselves, because they dare not directly face their existing psychological problems, do not want their inner thoughts to be known by others, and prefer to choose self-support and self-control. Although self-control can relieve psychological stress to some extent, students usually do not have a proven and scientific way to deal with emotion and stress, so it is not conducive to solving psychological problems in many cases. 31% of the students like to turn to their good friends for help when they have stress and psychological problems. They can get relieved by speaking to their friends. 4% of the students would tell their families so that they can be instructed. Many times, when students have psychological problems, it is difficult for them to ask for help from their families because they do not want their families to worry about them. 13% of the students would take the initiative to seek help from teachers, mostly for issues about learning and roommate relationship; only 3% of the students choose to go to the university's psychological counseling center for counseling, which means that the students do not know enough about the university's psychological counseling, or the mental health education system is not well publicized or not professional enough – as a result, it is not taken seriously by the students. It can be seen from the way students solve psychological problems that there are serious deficiencies in the coverage, professionalism and systematization of mental health education in the university.
Respondents' recognition of the mental health education system
As shown in Figure 7, students' recognition of the university's mental health education system is investigated, mainly through their satisfaction with mental health education courses, mental health lectures and publicity activities, psychological counseling service institution, etc. The questionnaire data show that 34% of the students think that the psychological counseling center can solve the current psychological problems – these students can actively and fully use the existing resources, but the services they
receive are relatively simple; 26% of the students think that the psychological counseling center has limited effect, and there is only simple counseling talk or ideological education, but no follow-up professional psychotherapy – these students like to take self-control or other ways to solve their psychological problems; 33% of the students do not know where the psychological counseling center is or even its existence, which indicates that such students never think of receiving psychological counseling services from the university or the psychological counseling services of the university are not well publicized; The remaining 7% of the students are indifferent to whether the university has a psychological counseling service center or not.
Figure 7
.
Students' recognition of the mental
health education system
OPTIMIZE THE CURRICULUM DESIGN OF MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION
In order to give full play to the psychological health education system, based on the actual investigation, the author tries to optimize the structure of the mental health education system, including teachers, teaching objectives and contents, textbook and ways of teaching, and curriculum assessment.
As shown in Table 1, in this study, the author takes the optimization of curriculum assessment as an example. In order to test the actual results of mental health education courses and measure the changes of students' psychological state, their ability to apply psychological knowledge, etc. before and after mental health education, colleges and universities shall pay attention to the assessment of teaching effectiveness, especially students' cognition and quality. The assessment is conducted from three aspects, namely cognitive ability, internalization ability and comprehensive quality, to give a score of learning effectiveness, so as to reflect the development of mental health education system.
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Table 1.
Assessment form of mental health education course
Assessment
type Achievement Weight Evaluation criteria
Cognitive
assessment 100 0.3
Pay attention to the adjustment of students' cognition, and give consideration to knowledge. The assessment method can be personal assignment, case analysis, keynote speech and other methods, generally
in the classroom.
Assessment of internalization
ability
100 0.3
The assessment of internalization ability mainly considers the ability and degree of students' understanding, application and internalization after
learning. The assessment method adopts the three-way evaluation system of self-evaluation, others' evaluation and teachers' evaluation to
comprehensively assess the degree of students' Internalization and change and improvement. General course final assessment
Comprehensive quality assessment
100 0.4
Group project assignment, scenario simulation, case analysis, gro up game and other methods are used. The participation of students, the degree of completion of tasks and the quality of completion of tasks should be fully considered in the assessment and evaluation of each
project. Generally, the assessment will be conducted in class.
CONSTRUCT POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
EDUCATION THEORY
The optimization of mental health curriculum must be based on certain mental health education theory. The positive psychology uses positive methods to explain psychological phenomena, which is of guiding significance to curriculum construction. This theory advocates the construction of individual positive experience from the subjective aspect, promotes the formation of positive personality at the individual level, and constructs the collective positive system and education organization system. Based on the positive psychology, the
theory of positive pedagogy helps students to solve psychological and behavioral problems, promote the formation of students' positive and healthy psychological quality, and shape a positive and healthy personality.
As shown in Table 2, active mental health education is different from traditional mental health education. The former treats psychological illnesses objectively. It avoids the malpractice of traditional mental health education of being palliative. Instead, it uses positive power to solve psychological problems and constantly cultivates individual positive personality.
Table 2.
Comparison of traditional and active health education
Project Traditional mental health education Positive mental health education Philosophy
foundation human nature evil man nature good
Direction solve the problem cultivate the positive quality
Aim away from psychological problems build a happy life
Task cure disease and save people educate people and cultivate heart
Function remedy diagnosis prevention and development
Object problem students all students
Structure teachers as the center students as the center
Content discovery to eliminate psychological
problems and obstacles
develop positive psychological quality and potential
Process Process discovery - Analysis – solution Main topic
Comprehensive entry development potential prevention Main topic
The effect treat the symptoms, not to treat the root prevention first, and to treat both the symptoms and the symptoms
Theoretical
support not specific
positive psychology theory is the core, Combined with other theories
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND TEACHING THEORY OF MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES 339
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the author uses empirical analysis, questionnaire survey and other research methods to carry out a case study of a university on the students' demographic characteristics, psychological states and their recognition of the university's mental health education system, analyzes the current situation of mental health education system in colleges and universities, and discusses how to optimize mental health education curriculum and construct the theoretical basis of mental health education system. The conclusions are as follows:
(1) The problems in the mental health education system can be analyzed by examining the demographic characteristics and mental health status of students and their recognition of the mental health education system.
(2) Assessment is an important part of the mental health education system. Students' cognitive ability, internalization ability and comprehensive quality can be graded according to the weight coefficient, and the assessment results can help to test and find out the advantages and disadvantages of the mental health education system.
(3) The design of mental health education curriculum must be based on a certain theory. The theory of positive psychology advocates the construction of individual positive experience from the subjective aspect, promotes the formation of positive personality at the individual level, and constructs the collective positive system and education organization system. The application of the theory can better promote the formation of students' positive and healthy psychological quality and shape positive and healthy personality.
Acknowledgements
Henan province higher education teaching reform research and practice project: Local Colleges and universities tourism management professional application personnel training system reform research and practice, number: 2017136.
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