The Ministry of Education and other 17 departments jointly issued a special action plan to comprehensively strengthen and improve students’ mental health in the new era.

Cctv newsIn order to conscientiously implement the spirit of the 20th Party Congress, China Education Modernization 2035 and the State Council’s Opinions on Implementing Healthy China Action, comprehensively strengthen and improve students’ mental health work in the new era, and improve their mental health literacy, it was reviewed and approved by the Central Education Leading Group meeting. Recently, the Ministry of Education and other 17 departments jointly issued the Special Action Plan for Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving Students’ Mental Health Work in the New Era (2023— 2025) (hereinafter referred to as the Action Plan).

　　The Action Plan adheres to the guidance of the Supreme Leader’s Socialism with Chinese characteristics Thought in the New Era, comprehensively implements the Party’s educational policy, persists in educating the Party and the country, implements the fundamental task of educating people by virtue, adheres to the educational concept of putting health first, puts mental health work in a more prominent position, promotes the coordinated development of students’ ideological and moral quality, scientific and cultural quality and physical and mental health quality, and trains new people of the times who are responsible for national rejuvenation.

　　Eight key tasks are deployed in the Action Plan: First, promoting mental health with five educations, persisting in the unity of learning knowledge and improving overall quality, and cultivating socialist builders and successors with all-round development in morality, intelligence, physique, beauty and labor. The second is to strengthen mental health education, offer related mental health courses, give full play to the role of classroom teaching, pay attention to individual differences of students, and help students master mental health knowledge and skills. The third is to standardize mental health monitoring, adhere to prevention first, move forward, and regularly carry out students’ mental health assessment. Fourth, improve the psychological early warning intervention, improve the early warning system, strengthen the construction of physical defense and technical defense, find serious mental health problems of students as soon as possible, unblock the channels for prevention and referral intervention, and timely refer, diagnose and treat. Fifth, strengthen the team of psychological talents, improve the quality of personnel training, equip mental health teachers and smooth the channels of teacher development. Sixth, support mental health research, carry out basic, cutting-edge and international research on students’ mental health, and promote the application of results. Seventh, optimize social psychological service, improve social psychological service ability, strengthen family education guidance service and strengthen the protection of minors. Eighth, create a healthy growth environment, extensively carry out popular science on students’ mental health knowledge and prevention of psychological problems, popularize students’ experience and practices in mental health work, and strengthen daily supervision and management.

　　The Action Plan emphasizes the improvement of various safeguard measures. First, strengthen organizational leadership, and incorporate students’ mental health work into the evaluation of the provincial people’s government’s performance of educational duties, into the overall planning of school reform and development, into the talent training system and supervision and evaluation index system, as an important part of the evaluation of running schools at all levels and the annual assessment of leading bodies. The second is to implement funding, increase overall planning, optimize the expenditure structure, and effectively strengthen the funding guarantee for students’ mental health work. The third is to cultivate and popularize experience, support qualified regions and schools to innovate students’ mental health work mode, and play a leading and driving role.