Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 1156-1161
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.165 1156
I
NFLUENCE OF
I
DEOLOGICAL AND
P
OLITICAL
E
DUCATION ON
M
ENTAL
H
EALTH OF
C
OLLEGE
S
TUDENTS UNDER
M
EDIA
C
ONVERGENCE
Xiuli Zhang
Abstract
The mental health of college students is a nonnegligible issue in higher education. In the context of media convergence, this paper aims to disclose how the ideological and political curriculum in colleges influences the mental health of students. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted among college students of different majors, grades and genders. Then, the survey results were discussed in three dimensions: emotion, interpersonal relationship and cognition. The results show that the ideological and political education in colleges helps students to develop a positive mindset and acquire social wisdom, and promote their mental health; the ideological and political curriculum can improve the behavior and interpersonal relationship of college students. The research results lay a theoretical basis for the design of ideological and political curriculum in Chinese colleges.
Key words: Mental Health, Ideological and Political Education, College Curriculum, Media Convergence.
Received: 03-03-19 | Accepted: 08-08-19
INTRODUCTION
The university life, as the most precious period in people's life, can gradually improve the overall quality of students, such as ability to develop the relationship with others, learning capacity, interpersonal savvy, adaptability to the environment, etc. (Hatzidimitriadou, 2002; Yang, Lin, Zhu et al, 2015; Tolman, Impett, Tracy et al, 2006). The healthy psychology of students, if available, plays a positive effect on their overall development and competence in solving problems (Mossberg, 2016; Ikwuka, Galbraith, Manktelow et al, 2016). Positive psychological quality can also promote the students’ health and growth, help create a harmonious campus environment, and do good to the social stable development (Hansen, 2006, Novella & Campos, 2017). Students as talents reserved in society
School of Marxism Studies, Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo 454000, China.
E-Mail: [email protected]
contribute to the advancement of society. For this purpose, major universities have targeted to the cultivation of the comprehensive innate quality of students (Shen & Snowden, 2014; Karatekin, 2017, Salzer, 2012).
In Today’s era, the information technology is rapidly developing. Media and network evolved have greatly influence on the mental health and quality training of students. Mental health helps discover potential strength and competence of students, maximize their potentials, boost their all-round development, and improve their overall quality (Alzayyat, 2014; Herman, Archambeau, Deliramich et al, 2011). Students have entered their prime time for development. They have exuberant energy, active minds, and strong curiosity. Healthy psychology not only enables students to keep a positive attitude, but also allows them to learn with full energy, respond more actively when they face difficulties, and adjust their mindset to face life with ease (Melrose & Shapiro, 1999; Lewis & Mai, 2017; Josh, Angie, Saff et al, 2018). It is therefore significant for individuals, universities
XIULI ZHANG 1157
and society to cultivate the mental health of students.
To improve and adjust students' mental health, universities play a role that should not be ignored. Based on the media convergence perspective, a questionnaire survey is conducted to analyze what’s the relationship between students' psychological state and the ideological and political courses offered by universities, and investigate how the ideological and political curriculum construction influences the mental health of students. The study lays a theoretical basis for beating students’ psychological stress and developing students' mental health.
FORMATION OF STUDENTS' MENTAL HEALTH FROM THE NEW MEDIA PERSPECTIVE
Relevant concepts of students' mental health
Positive psychology quality benefits students’ physical and mental health. First, mental health contributes to body health and develops an optimistic attitude towards life, such as satisfaction, optimism, and positivity. Science says that optimistic moods can regulate the secretion system in the human body to the best state that makes for the physical and mental
development against diseases. Secondly,
positive psychology can develop good
psychological quality. Students face pressures from interpersonal relationship, emotion, employment, and life with stress tolerance. Studies have shown that positive psychological quality can enable students to have optimistic attitude towards life, a positive view of the problem, and build up the confidence.
People, as a part of society, play a decisive role in social development. The psychological quality of students also does a key role in the establishment of a harmonious campus. Students can respect others, care about classmates, actively participate in activities, and have a sense of collective happiness, etc. Students promote the harmonious campus as a part of society, which can facilitate the establishment of a harmonious society.
Formation and cultivation of mental health
The mental health training approaches mainly include school education, social environment and self-discipline. Universities are the main place for the formation of students' mental health. Students develop positive
psychological qualities by learning relevant courses, attending lectures, and participating in training. In the course of teaching, teachers lead students to find and solve problems. Guided by teachers, it is easier for them to understand the knowledge. The school education method is flexible and changeable. Therefore, it is an effective way to cultivate students' mental health via the study of courses.
The influence of social environment is an important support for the formation of mental health of students. Individual growth cannot be separated from family and society. After tens of years of growth and experience, students have developed stable characters and values. The family environment is the earliest contact environment in the process of individual growth. How well the family environment directly determines the quality of the individual in the process of growth. The quality of the parents will influence the education of the children and contribute to the formation of children's mental health. Parents will therefore focus on their own conducts and influence and educate their children with their positive qualities.
Personal perfection is indispensable for cultivating the mental health of students. Self-management and self-education can constrain their behaviors and improve their qualities and abilities. Books are the ladder of human progress. By reading books, they can acquire the theoretical knowledge they need, establish your own measurement standards, and have positive promotion meanings for individual growth and life. Thus, they gain happiness and turn theory into practice. Life is also undergoing earth-shaking changes in subtlety.
INFLUENCE OF IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL COURSES ON STUDENTS' MENTAL HEALTH UNDER THE MEDIA CONVERGENCE
Study method
This paper conducts a survey among students in a university on their mental health status after studying the ideological and political course. Data analysis compares whether the results from survey are consistent with the assumptions. The flow chart of specific research method is shown in Figure 1.
This paper assumes that the ideological and political curriculum can facilitate the mental health of students. After studying this course, it is investigated that students' mental health
INFLUENCE OF IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL EDUCATION ON MENTAL HEALTH OF COLLEGE STUDENTS UNDER MEDIA CONVERGENCE 1158
Figure 1
.
Flow chart of research methodology
Research hypothesis
Questionnaire design
Questionnaire release
Statistical analysis of data Questionnaire on
mental health of college students
Three dimensions of mental health
Conclusion and Suggestions
changes from three dimensions: emotion, interpersonal relationship and cognition. The main method is to check the mental health status of students and their opinions on the specific problems by the questionnaire survey. Finally, based on the results from the survey, it is concluded by data analysis whether the ideological and political construction curriculum has a positive influence on the mental health of students. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed in this survey, and 521 were recovered at a rate of 86.83%. there are 487 valid questionnaires at a rate of 93.47%; the ratio of male to female is close to 1:1, as required by the study. The content of the questionnaires is mainly questioned from three dimensions, including emotion, interpersonal relationship and cognition. Among them, emotion covers love and kindness, feeling love, social wisdom; interpersonal relationship includes persistence, sincerity and courage; cognition includes thinking ability, innovation ability, curiosity and so on. Five standard answers are set to the questions, i.e. five levels of “1 Full Compliance”, “2 Compliance”, “3
Uncertainty”, “4 Non-conformance” and “5 Total
non-compliance”.
Result analysis
The survey results are analyzed according to
different dimensions, and the influences of different majors, grades and genders on the mental health of students are compared. The objective and real results are available. The results of the emotional dimension of students are shown in Figure 2. The results from the comprehensive survey are shown in Table 1.
From the statistical results, the ideological and political curriculum has a significantly positive influence on students' love and kindness, feeling love and social wisdom.
Figure 2
.
Emotional dimension results of
college students
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
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Feel love Love and kindness Social wisdom
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Table 1.
Ratio of quality in emotional dimension
Content Fully consistent Consistent Total Uncertain No conformity Completely inconsistent Feel love 56.2 31.6 87.8 4.4 6.6 1.2
love 51.4 23.4 74.8 12.3 12.0 0.9
Love and Kindness 60.3 27.8 88.1 7.2 4.0 0.7
Kindhearted 52.5 26.3 78.8 12.7 7.3 1.2
Social wisdom 54.2 31.2 85.4 8.9 4.9 0.8
Table 2.
Proportion of interpersonal dimension qualities
Content Fully consistent Consistent Total Uncertain No conformity Completely inconsistent Sincere 64.2 25.6 89.8 4.4 4.6 1.2
Insist 54.4 23.4 77.8 11.3 10.0 0.9
Brave 62.3 25.8 88.1 7.2 4.0 0.7
Examining the topic of "love and kindness", those students who think "fully compliant" and "compliant" are 88.1%; those for "social wisdom" are 85.4%; those for the "feeling love" problem are 87.8%. They are also more in other several qualities, but relatively less for the “love
”. These data show that students can have a greater influence on the quality of all aspects in the emotional dimension after studying the ideological and political curriculum, and there are certain differences in this regard.
Regarding the three qualities of the interpersonal dimension, i.e. persistence, sincerity and courage, the results from the survey are shown in Figure 3 and Table 2.
Figure 3
.
Interpersonal dimension quality
ratio chart
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Grade
Sincere Insist Brave
The questionnaire survey shows that the construction of ideological and political courses has a greater influence on students' mental health. As shown in the table, the survey results of “sincerity” quality mean that the proportion
of students who think “fully compliant” and “compliant” is 89.8. %, the maximum; the "brave" quality accounts for 88.1%, the "persistence" is the minimum, only 77.8%, that is to say, after studying the ideological and political course, the most influential quality is "sincerity"; the least influential is “persistence”.
The results from the survey on the “sincerity” quality can truly reflect students' perceptions of this quality, as shown in Figure 4 and Table 3. The standard results show that the proportion of
students who think “fully compliant” and
“compliant” reach more than 89.5%, up to 91.7%. Overall, the ideological and political curriculum has the greatest influence on the "sincerity" quality of students. The proportions of choosing "fully compliant" and "non-compliant" are lower, suggesting that students will be more sincere with others after completing this course.
The results from survey on the cognitive dimension are shown in Table 4. The results from the three dimensions of thinking ability, innovation ability and curiosity are shown in
Figure 4
.
Proportion of sincere quality
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
S
in
ce
re
Grade
Be sincere with others Active communication Respect for others
INFLUENCE OF IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL EDUCATION ON MENTAL HEALTH OF COLLEGE STUDENTS UNDER MEDIA CONVERGENCE 1160
Table 3.
Ratio of sincere quality
Content Fully
consistent Consistent Total Uncertain No conformity Completely inconsistent Be sincere with others 67.3 22.8 90.1 13.5 3.6 0
Active communication 63.2 26.3 89.5 13.3 2.8 0.5
Respect for others 65.8 25.9 91.7 11.4 3.1 0.3
Table 4.
Percentage of quality in cognitive dimension
Content Fully consistent Consistent Total Uncertain No conformity Completely inconsistent Thinking ability 53.7 23.1 76.8 19.6 3.6 0
Innovation ability 51.4 24.2 75.6 15.6 8.3 0.5
Curiosity 52.3 25.2 77.5 14.3 7.9 0.3
Figure 5
.
Bar chart of perceptions of quality
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Co
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Thinking ability Innovation ability Curiosity
the histogram 5.
The results show that for the quality of
“thinking ability”, those who think “full
compliant” and “compliant” account for 76.8%, 75.6% for “innovation ability” quality, and 77.5% for “curiosity”. In general, the students' study of ideological and political courses has a greater influence on their mental health, but less than the interpersonal dimension does.
Influence of ideological and political courses on mental health
The survey results show that the ideological and political curriculum has a great influence on three qualities about students' mental health. Therefore, it is concluded from analysis that the ideological and political curriculum has a positive influence on the cultivation of students' mental health qualities, mainly including
emotion and recognition, interpersonal
relationship.
Cognitive level can promote the formation of
students' self-concepts. After accepting mental health knowledge, students can generalize and summarize their knowledge to form their own viewpoints, thoughts, beliefs and emotions, so that they can actively face difficulties and solve problems. Interpersonal relationship level can promote students to establish harmonious interpersonal relationship. Classroom teacher-student interaction and extracurricular training make students know how to respect others, live in harmony with friends, know how to love and be loved, and actively treat their own feelings. The emotional level can promote students to actively change their behavior habits, get along with friends, get closer to roommates, and actively help others.
CONCLUSIONS
Under the media convergence perspective, this paper conducts a questionnaire survey on the psychological state of students who learn the ideological and political courses to investigate how the ideological and political curriculum construction influences students' mental health, interpersonal relationship and mentality. The main conclusions are drawn as follows:
The ideological and political courses set in universities can help students better know "how to love and be loved", do things for others, treat people more sincerely, and also avail the formation of good interpersonal relationships.
The ideological and political curriculum construction in universities is helpful for the development of positive attitudes and social wisdom of students; the study of ideological and political curricula can positively and effectively improve students' mental health.
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Students' mental health deserves more attention as the ideological and political curriculum construction in universities is an effective way to develop students' mental health and positive mentality.
Acknowledgement
This research has been financed by The Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project in 2019 of the Department of Education of Henan Province “The Generation and Reconstruction of Cultural Self-Confidence in Post-May 4th Era” (2019-ZZJH-381).
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