The Influence of Integrating the Basic Theory of Marxism into College Students’ Mental Health Under the Data Driven and Internet Environment

Introduction

Youth makes a country prosperous and strong.¹ College students shoulder the sacred mission of prosperity and development of various countries, their personal physical and mental health is crucial to the development of society. Ensuring the mental health of college students is the basis for achieving both ability and political integrity and meeting social needs. In the current internet environment, college students will receive all kinds of explosive network information on the internet. The collision of various ideas on the internet will have a huge impact on the shaping of their own ideas and values.² The diversified value orientations, conflicting ideas, and evil spirits in online public opinion can also profoundly affect the psychological state of college students, resulting in the occurrence of various psychological problems and mental illnesses in some college students. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the ability to actively prevent and intervene in the current psychological crisis of college students and help college students to better cope with the psychological crisis to promote the healthy growth of young people.³ In order to strengthen the mental health education of Chinese college students, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the Ministry of Education, and other 22 departments jointly issued the “Guiding Opinions on Strengthening Mental Health Services” and the work requirements of the “Implementation Outline of the Project for Improving the Quality of Ideological and Political Work in Colleges and Universities” of the Party Group of the Ministry of Education of the Communist Party of China. It mainly aims at the development of mental health in the new era, puts forward the pattern of mental health education in education and teaching, practical activities, consulting services, prevention and intervention, and puts forward many concrete measures. The purpose is to pay attention to the mental health problems of college students in time, take appropriate measures, have obvious effects, and significantly reduce the incidence of mental illness.⁴

In recent years, it has become more popular to combine the internet with the mental health of college students. For example, Harrer et al (2019) argued that mental health disorders were prevalent among college students, synthesizing data on the effectiveness of internet-based interventions on college students’ mental health. The results showed that the intervention effect on depression, anxiety, and stress was very small, while the effect on eating disorder symptoms and role function was moderate, and the effect on happiness was not significant. It indicated that internet interventions for college students’ mental health could have a significant small to moderate impact on a series of conditions.⁵ Shao et al (2018) believed that Internet addiction had gradually become a serious problem in the field of global public health. The purpose is to estimate the prevalence of internet addiction among Chinese college students, to improve the mental health of college students, and to provide evidence for the prevention of internet addiction.⁶ The research of González-García et al (2021) aimed to evaluate the feasibility of a short online intervention based on mindfulness and compassion to promote mental health among first-year college students during family imprisonment in COVID-19. The results show that it can alleviate the burden of mental health caused by the COVID-19 epidemic.⁷ Villani et al (2021) investigated the impact of COVID-19 epidemic on the mental health of Italian college students. Patient Health Participation Scale, Self-rated Anxiety Scale, and Self-Rated Depression Scale were used to evaluate the participation, anxiety symptoms, and depression symptoms of the samples. It was found that about 55% of the students were willing to make more contributions to the response to the epidemic, and the increased incidence of anxiety was related to women, students in Rome campus, inability to go to college, estrangement from colleagues and inability to meet their partners. Doing physical activities reduces this possibility.⁸ Therefore, it is very necessary to establish a perfect college students’ psychological dynamic tracking system. Because people’s psychological state is a dynamic process of change, only perfect college students’ psychological dynamic data can clearly show the psychological changes of college students, data-driven mental health education methods and strategies to make college mental health education more scientific and practical.

In summary, this paper builds a dynamic tracking system for college students’ mental health based on the Browser/Server (B/S) system structure to obtain college students’ mental health data to study the effect of college students’ mental health teaching that incorporates the basic theory of Marxism. The dynamic changes of college students’ mental health integrated with the basic theory of Marxism is explored to more accurately grasp the psychological situation of college students. From the results of the questionnaire survey, it verifies the influence and effect of Marxism on college students’ mental health.

Materials and Methods

Marxist Thought of the All-Round Development of Man

The all-round development of man is one of the basic principles of Marxism and the theoretical cornerstone of China’s educational policy. However, Marx’s theory of the all-round development of man is considered and explained from various perspectives such as philosophy and political economy in different stages. In particular, Marx pointed out in “Theses on Feuerbach” that all social life is in essence practice, and man is the sum of all social relations. These two points explain the stipulation of human nature from a practical point of view. Marx believed that human life in society is essentially practical, and human social relations are actually cultivated by human practice in society. Only by knowing the essence of man from these two perspectives can people make a concrete scientific explanation of the all-round development of man in Marxism⁹ to fully understand the core of the theory of the all-round development of man by understanding the essential stipulation of human beings. Marx’s exposition on the all-round development of man is shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 Marx’s discourse on the all-round development of man.

Figure 1 shows that Marx’s discourse on the all-round development of man is mainly divided into four points. First is the all-round development of people’s own needs, which is the source of people’s enthusiasm for activities and the needs of their humanity, so the need for comprehensive development becomes the purpose of people’s practice of labour.¹⁰ Therefore, it shows that people meet their needs by engaging in labour and social activities, and new needs are generated in social interaction, and the continuous new needs become the internal development power of people. At present, college students can basically be satisfied in terms of material, but they are still relatively lacking in spiritual needs or psychological needs.¹¹ The second is the all-round development of people’s own abilities. The responsibility and mission of any person are to develop their abilities more comprehensively. The third is the all-round development of people’s own characteristics. The all-round development of personality is mainly reflected in the improvement of individual subjectivity and uniqueness. Only when more people break through the inherent single frame structure, can society truly progress.¹² Firstly, the original society was formed through the interdependence of people, and its own uniqueness could not be brought into play. Secondly, the formation of society is based on the dependence of things, that is, the current social stage, so people’s autonomy is brought into full play, and people can exchange materials independently. Finally, it is through the all-round development of people that the so-called consortium of free people is formed. In this free environment, each person’s abilities in various aspects can be further improved, which can fully provide various conditions for the all-round development of human personality.¹³ The fourth is the all-round development of human relationships. Marx believed that in reality, people are the sum of all relationships, and their needs and abilities need to be obtained through social relationships. Therefore, social relations can also reflect the degree of development of the individual, and as an individual, people also establish connections with the surrounding things through practical activities to promote the overall development of people.¹⁴

In order to practice the Marxist theory of all-round development in China, since the reform and opening up, China has always regarded improving the quality of the whole nation as a fundamental task related to the overall situation of socialist modernization. Therefore, a series of educational reforms are carried out, resulting in quality education that meets the requirements of the times.¹⁵ The characteristics of exam-oriented education and quality-oriented education are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Basic features of quality education theory.

Figure 2 shows that quality education is not only for the current development of students, but also for the pursuit of their lifelong development to elevate the development of student education to a new height of people-oriented value. Quality education refers to a new type of education model aiming at improving the quality of the educated in all aspects. It pays more attention to the education of people’s ideological and moral quality, ability training, personality development, physical health, and mental health. Quality education is first taking human development as the core according to the basic law of human development and social development to achieve the harmonious development of students’ bodies and minds, and fully respect the students’ subjectivity and personality in the practice process of human potential mining.¹⁶

Marxism and Mental Health Education

The essence of mental health education is considered to be wisdom education. As early as 1985, the American psychologist Sternberg proposed the triadic structure theory of intelligence.¹⁷ Intelligence is actually self-management at the psychological level, and the components of intelligence are divided into three levels. It shows that psychology itself is a layer-by-layer feedback adjustment process, and this adjustment process is essentially the process of individuals applying wisdom in practical activities. Maslow, a famous American social psychologist and founder of the third generation of psychology, believes that neurotics are not emotionally sick people, but cognitively abnormal people.¹⁸ Similarly, American clinical psychologist Albert Ellis also believes that emotions or bad behaviours are not caused by an externally induced event itself, but because the individual evaluated the explanatory cognition of the event.¹⁹ In other words, people are not troubled by the things themselves, but by the way they think about them. It is precisely because of the defects of cognitive style and thinking style caused by the negativity of philosophical study that it leads to its own understanding of objective things, the essence, and the grasp of the law, and it appears one-sided and superficial.²⁰ Therefore, in the internet environment, mental health education must take the cultivation of students’ objective cognition of reality as the basis of education, and then require students to exercise their own psychological adjustment function in real practice, to overcome the disconnection between psychological activity mechanism and real social life, and finally to cultivate their own healthier psychological state.²¹ The self-awareness to be established in mental health education is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Self-awareness to be established in mental health education.

In Figure 3, self-confidence is explained by the active principle of Marxist philosophical consciousness, which believes that consciousness is the autonomous transformation of the objective world through practical activities, from the purpose of practice to the process of practice to the result of practice.²² The power of consciousness itself and the spirit and wisdom possessed by human beings are the reasons why people should be confident. And Marx put forward before that the essence of man is not an abstract thing inherent in a single person, in its reality, it is the sum of all social relations. This conclusion takes the social relationship between people and people in their practical activities as the starting point and destination for investigating the nature of a person and dialectically unifies the relationship between people and society, and all objects more objectively and scientifically, thereby revealing the true meaning of human beings.²³ Both Marxist philosophy and mental health education are based on the fundamental purpose of cultivating talents with the comprehensive and healthy development of body and mind. Philosophy itself is quality education, human nature education, and wisdom education. Through further study of Marxist philosophy, college students not only gain wisdom and promote their all-round development, but also make people’s realm noble and mental health.

It is through the philosophical education of Marxism that can effectively improve the dialectical cognition level of college students, which is the fundamental way to cultivate healthy psychology. At the macro level, the scientific world outlook is the premise of a healthy personality, which can provide the basic methodological guidance for mental health education, and finally realize the purpose of mental health education through the establishment of the world outlook, outlook on life, and values. At the micro level, the specific principles of Marxist philosophy can also be used as the basis of mental health education and the starting point of self-awareness.²⁴ If self-consciousness has deviated, it will inevitably lead to an inferiority complex or complacency at the psychological level. And Marxism will always correct this cognitive bias and escort the mental health of college students.

Data-Driven Mental Health System for College Students

The mental health tracking system for college students decided to use the Active Server Page.net (ASP.NET) dynamic web page development platform with B/S system structure, and the background code was compiled and implemented in C# (“C Sharp”) language. The database uses SQL SERVER 2005 (Microsoft SQL server 2005), the script language is embedded in the HTML document, the data connection and calling method are stored in the class file, so that the data reading is simple and clear, the code is readable, and the fault tolerance is strong. Meanwhile, it greatly reduces the use requirements of the client on the computer, and effectively relieves the cost and corresponding workload in the process of system maintenance and upgrade.²⁵ It also can greatly facilitate the collection of college students’ mental health data. Only by obtaining, processing and using the mental health data of college students in time, can the dynamic changes of college students’ mental health be obtained more accurately. The operating environment of the college students’ mental health data collection system is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 The operating environment of the mental health data collection system.

Students’ mental health data collection. First, through the psychological counselling station, 3482 undergraduates and sophomores are organized to have a psychological census test (mainly by using the “Student Psychological File System”) to collect students’ psychological related data, such as: psychological depression, sense of value, suicide attempt, self-injury tendency and admiration for suicide tendency. Then, according to the data of the psychological census, professional psychological teachers divide and grade the data to obtain the initial mental health status of the students. Then the dynamic investigation of the students’ monthly psychological data is carried out to obtain the dynamic change data of the students’ monthly mental health status. The acquisition process of student mental health data is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Acquisition process of student mental health data.

Results and Discussion

180 students are investigated by mental health questionnaire. The scale used is a self-rating scale, which consists of 45 items after revision. This scale is based on SCL-90 (Self-reporting Inventory) compiled by L.R. Derogatis, and includes personal information, five factors of life stressors, five factors of psychological crisis and the current situation of college students’ Marxist IPE. The changes in students’ mental health before and after the mental health education that integrates the basic ideas of Marxism are mainly analyzed to conduct a comparative study. The questionnaire passes the reliability and validity analysis, and finally collects 168 data survey results of mental health education students, including 89 boys and 79 girls.

The Basic Situation of the Surveyed College Students

After statistics, the gender and age of the surveyed college students are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Gender and age of the surveyed college students.

Figure 6 shows that the percentage of males is 49.6%, while that of females is 50.4%. The percentage of those aged 17 to 18 is 37.5%. The percentage of those aged 19 to 20 is 30.1%. The percentage of those aged 21 to 22 is 20.5%. The percentage of those aged 22 and over is 11.9%. Then, the distribution of professional disciplines is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7 Distribution of professional disciplines of the surveyed college students.

Figure 7 shows the subject distribution of the surveyed college students: art students accounted for 42.8%, science students accounted for 20.8%, and engineering students accounted for 36.4%.

Analysis of Five Factors of Stressors in College Students’ Life

Among the surveyed college students, the range of the mean and standard deviation of the total average score of the 10 stressors is 2.73±0.88. The specific analysis results are shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8 Analysis of five factors of life stressors of the surveyed college students.

Figure 8 shows that among the five factors of college students’ life stressors, the range of mean and standard deviation of frustration stimulation is 2.76±1.03. The range of mean and standard deviation of inner contradiction is 2.67±1.01. The range of mean and standard deviation of realistic change is 2.68±1.03. The range of mean and standard deviation of environmental pressure is 2.81±0.99. The range of mean and standard deviation of self-forcing is 2.73±0.97. Among the five major life stressors, the mean value of environmental stress is higher than other factors of life stressors, and the relatively low life stressors are internal contradictions and reality changes, which shows that the current college students’ external compressive capacity will continue to improve.

Analysis of Five Factors of College Students’ Psychological Crisis Factors

Among the five indicators of college students’ psychological crisis, the main factors are waking up early, being worthless, suicidal attempts, self-harm, and envious suicide. The specific analysis is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9 Analysis of five indicators of psychological crisis factors of the surveyed college students.

Figure 9 shows that the mean and standard deviation of waking up early is 2.35±1.58, the mean and standard deviation of worthless is 2.53±1.69, the mean and standard deviation of suicidal attempt is 2.52±1.68, the mean and standard deviation of self-harm is 2.25±1.50, and the mean and standard deviation of envious suicide is 2.47±1.65. The five psychological crises of college students show that the average value of worthless among the surveyed college students is significantly higher than other factors of psychological crisis, and the relatively low psychological crisis is the two factors of waking up early and self-harm, which indicates that more attention should be paid to students with suicidal attempt.

An Analysis of the Situation of Marxist IPE for College Students

Learning motivation is a key factor that directly affects the innovation and development of college students’ IPE. Figure 10 shows the specific situation of college students’ learning motivation for Marxist IPE.

Figure 10 Motivation for studying ideological and political theory courses.

In Figure 10, the percentage of college students who believe that this course must be taken is 63.1%. The percentage of students who believe that studying the course can improve their ideological and political quality is 30.4%. The percentage of students who think that they are attracted by the charm of teachers is 3.2%. The percentage of students who are motivated by their own interest in the course is 3.3%. In the investigation of enriching the content of IPE in university students, the specific situation of college students’ increasing ideological and political theory education methods is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11 The specific situation of college students to increase the way of ideological and political theory education.

Figure 11 shows that the percentage of college students choosing to increase the practice link is 75.3%. The percentage of increasing the psychological knowledge and evaluation of coping with psychological problems is 70.1%. The percentage of increasing the theoretical knowledge of relevant cases is 63.5%. The percentage of increasing the potential ability of individuals and cultivating the positive emotions of individuals is 56.6% and 52.3%. It shows that the vast majority of students are more willing to join more practical links while receiving IPE. Meanwhile, they should continue to strengthen the integration of psychology and IPE.

College Students’ Basic Psychology, Life Stressors, and Crisis Factors Mean Comparison T-Test

SPSS20.0 independent sample T-test procedure is used to compare the mean values of college students’ basic psychology, life stressors, and crisis factors.

Table 1 shows that the total mean value of life stressors and their five factors in the male and female groups are tested by the mean sample T-test, and it is concluded that there is no significant difference in the total mean value of life stressors and their respective stressors suffered by males and females (P> 0.05).

Table 1 Independent Sample T-Test for the Mean Value of Life Stressors in Male and Female Groups

Table 2 indicates that the T-test is conducted to compare the five indicators of psychological crisis for males and females, and it is concluded that there is no significant difference in the mean values of the indicators of the psychological crisis for males and females (P>0.01). Similarly, the multi-parameter estimation of the five factors of life stressors of arts and science students found that the levels of frustration stimulation and realistic changes of liberal arts students and engineering students are significantly higher than those of science students (p<0.05). However, there was no significant difference in the mean values of other life stressors among the liberal arts and science student groups (p>0.01). The multi-parameter estimation of the five indicators of psychological crisis of the students in the arts and sciences shows that the level of waking up early of the liberal arts students is significantly higher than that of the students of science and engineering (p<0.01). The mean values of other psychological crisis indicators of liberal arts students are significantly higher than those of science students (p<0.01). This shows that in the internet environment, the life stressors that college students endure are the risk factors that induce the tendency to psychological crisis. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate the core literacy of college students through the basic theory of Marx, and actively prevent and intervene in the psychological crisis that college students may appear.

Table 2 Independent Sample T-Test for the Mean of the Five Indicators of Psychological Crisis for Males and Females

Discussion

In order to further illustrate the advantages of this paper, the results are compared with those of others. Faisal et al (2022) thought that the COVID-19 epidemic had affected the normal mental health of college students, and evaluated the anxiety, depression symptoms and mental health of Bangladeshi college students. The results show that 40% of the participants have moderate to severe anxiety, 72% have depressive symptoms, and 53% have moderate to poor mental health, which reveals that Bangladeshi college students have high mental health problems, and COVID-19’s anxiety indicates their psychopathological symptoms.²⁶ Wilson et al (2021) investigated the obvious effects of COVID-19 epidemic on physical activity, perceived stress and depressive symptoms of college students. The differences of physical activity and mental health among the epidemic situations in COVID-19 were examined by mixed variance analysis. It was found that under the epidemic situation of COVID-19, the level of physical activity and mental health of college students decreased significantly, and physical activity seemed unable to prevent the deterioration of mental health.²⁷ Li et al (2021) discussed the influencing factors of COVID-19’s psychological impact on college students in Wuhan, and verified that college students are faced with individual risks. The results show that COVID-19’s psychological influence is serious. Mental health services that reduce post-traumatic stress disorder should be provided, and students who have lost loved ones and family economic losses should receive special care.²⁸ The above research results show that although the research background of college students’ mental health is different, the reasons for the mental health of college students are analyzed and recommended. The advantage of this paper is to integrate psychology with ideological and political education, and to cultivate the core literacy of college students through Marx’s basic theory, and to actively prevent and intervene in the psychological crisis of college students.

Conclusions

In the internet age, the psychological state of college students has undergone great changes. Through the study of the thought and connotation of the basic theory of Marxism, Marxist thought is integrated into the quality education and mental health education of college students. Through the establishment of a college student mental health data system, it is found that there are differences between gender and professional groups in the development of college students’ core literacy, stress and crisis. Moreover, the stressors of college students’ life are the risk factors that induce the tendency to psychological crisis. However, because the studied sample is too small, and the Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) structural equation model is not constructed, the path analysis and construction modeling are done according to the total sample and sub-samples so the conclusions are not detailed enough. Future work is to focus on the above shortcomings to improve, so that through the Marxist IPE on the psychological crisis of the positive intervention to better practical guidance to ease the life of college students stress and crisis.