Educational Reform Strategy for Improving Mental Health Literacy of Vocational College Students

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Depression is a prevalent negative emotion in daily lives that threatens individuals' physical and mental well-being. Adult attachment plays a crucial role in interpersonal relationships. In this study, adult attachment and depressive emotion were selected as variables to delve into the factors influencing the mental health status of vocational college students from different angles. Such research holds significant implications for fostering psychological maturity and better personality as well as developing social relations and personal careers among vocational college students. This study investigated 280 vocational college students on their adult attachment styles and depressive emotion and came to the following conclusions: (1) Significant difference was observed in attachment anxiety between genders, with males experiencing lower levels of attachment anxiety compared to females; (2) Students across different academic years showed significant variations in avoidant attachment and depressive emotion, with sophomores and juniors exhibiting lower levels of depressive emotion compared to freshmen; (3) Significant differences were also observed in the levels of depressive emotion between students who are only children and those who have siblings, with the latter group reporting lower levels of depression; (4) Significant positive correlations were found between the level of depressive emotion and both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety, that is, the lower the degrees of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, the less likely for students to be depressed. In terms of the above, below educational strategies for improving the mental health literacy of vocational college students were proposed: (1) Educational institutions should shift from lecturer-led teaching to practical teaching in mental health education; (2) Educational institutions should offer different mental health courses based on the attachment styles of vocational college students.