In today's society, mental health problems are no longer a problem for a single occupational group, but gradually spread to primary and secondary school students, showing a trend of younger age. This grim situation has aroused great concern from Sun Yan, a deputy to the National People's Congress and vice president of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Maternal and Child Health Hospital. She pointed out that the number of patients with depression and anxiety disorders in the child and adolescent psychology clinic and student outpatient clinic of the clinical psychology department of her hospital has continued to increase, which has become the main reason for students to suspend their studies.
In the face of this challenge, Ms. Sun Yan proposed a strategy for systemic intervention and emphasized the importance of tripartite cooperation among families, schools and hospitals. She believes that class teachers, as educators who spend a lot of time with students, have the advantage of identifying students' mental health problems. Through professional training, they are able to identify and refer students with mental health issues at an early stage, allowing students to receive professional treatment in a timely manner.
At the same time, hospitals should also strengthen the construction of child psychiatry and the training of physicians, especially the establishment of clinical psychology departments in maternal and child health care institutions for children and adolescents with mental and psychological diseases, so as to reduce the psychological pressure of students when they go to specialized hospitals.
It is worth mentioning that with the encouragement of relevant national policies, some innovative scientific and technological achievements are expected to quickly play an important role in the systematic intervention of adolescent mental health.
In April 2023, the Ministry of Education, the National Health Commission and 17 other departments jointly issued the "Special Action Plan for Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving Student Mental Health in the New Era (2023-2025)", which clearly encourages the application of mental health scientific research results to students' mental health education, monitoring and early warning, consulting services, intervention and other fields.
The application of some advanced medical technology scenarios, such as health risk assessment, mental stress analysis, memory training and sleep intervention, will greatly improve the coverage and early warning accuracy of adolescent psychological screening, so as to detect and intervene in the risk of various psychological disorders in a timely manner.
We look forward to the collaboration of families, schools, hospitals, and technological equipment to protect the mental health of adolescents and establish a long-term mechanism to jointly protect the healthy growth of children.