As the winter vacation draws to a close, students across the country are returning to campus. In the new semester, children's mental health is drawing close attention from parents, schools and society. Relevant data show that the mental health of primary and secondary school students and university students in China is generally good. However, the proportion of students with depression, anxiety, academic burnout, internet addiction, self-harm and other problems is on the rise.

　　In the face of the growing mental health problems of adolescents, how should all sectors of society build a protective barrier for the beautiful minds of young people? To this end, in 2023, the Ministry of Education and 16 other departments jointly issued the Special Action Plan for Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving Student Mental Health Work in the New Era (2023—2025), and in November of the same year established the National Student Mental Health Work Advisory Committee. On February 21, at the **first plenary meeting of the National Student Mental Health Work Advisory Committee convened by the Ministry of Education, experts discussed how to safeguard students' mental health and called for stronger collaboration among families, schools, medical institutions and society, taking multiple measures to promote the mental health of adolescents and children.

　　Establishing scientific parenting concepts and creating a good family environment

　　The development of students' mental health is closely related to parents' parenting concepts and parenting styles.

　　“At present, the lack of parenting behavior in families and the irrationality of parenting concepts are relatively obvious, and family parenting capacity urgently needs to be improved,” said Lu Yongli, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and principal of Beijing No. 2 Experimental Primary School. According to her observations, at the primary school stage, the lack of parenting behavior is mostly seen in families where grandparents are the main caregivers; because of excessive pampering, these families lack the necessary “discipline” and “teaching” behaviors, resulting in primary school students showing severely infantilized behavior and psychological conditions when entering school and afterward.

　　Parents' insufficient reserve of mental health knowledge is also a common problem in family education. Lu Lin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Peking University Sixth Hospital, found that when children show signs of depression, anxiety or other emotional or psychological problems, many parents cannot identify and intervene in a timely manner. In addition, some parents and students hold prejudices about mental health problems, fearing being labeled and discriminated against, which could affect future schooling and employment, and therefore refuse to seek help from professionals or do not cooperate with treatment.

　　In this regard, Shangguan Jinxue, a psychological counselor at the Nanjing 12355 Youth Service Platform, proposed that adolescents' mental health cannot be separated from the family environment system in which they live, and that improving the family environment, promoting mutual communication among family members and improving the family support system are of great significance for improving adolescents' psychological state. She suggested carrying out parent schools, parenting education and the like that focus on improving parents' educational concepts, enhancing parent-child relationships and improving interactive communication skills, so as to help families improve their parenting capacity in terms of knowledge and skills; at the same time, institutionally secure enough family life time for parents so that they have time to return to the family and accompany their children's growth.

　　Improving teachers' psychological literacy and strengthening psychological education

　　In school education, how can students' mental health problems be better prevented, identified and intervened in as early as possible?

　　Dong Qi, director and professor of the Academic Committee of the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University, suggested strengthening the popularization of mental health knowledge among all teachers, improving the teacher mental health training system, and creating mental health courses and resources suitable for subject teachers, so as to help teachers effectively use mental health education strategies and methods in subject teaching, class management and home-school collaboration. At the same time, he suggested further strengthening the development of professional master's and doctoral programs in applied student mental health at universities, especially normal universities, and increasing doctoral programs in clinical and counseling psychology, with targeted quotas added according to the needs of different regions, so as to vigorously cultivate application-oriented talent urgently needed on the front line.

　　Dong Qi also said that schools currently lack professional support from scientific research in the discovery, identification and early intervention of students' psychological and behavioral problems. To this end, he suggested promoting organized scientific research in psychology and such disciplines as brain science, education, medicine and artificial intelligence, and accelerating the development of mental health assessment tools and early warning methods suited to the characteristics of Chinese children and adolescents today.

　　The content and forms of campus life have a direct impact on adolescents' mental health. From the perspective of enriching campus life, Wang Xinhong, vice principal of Shenzhen Middle School, shared her school's experience. She believes that, on the one hand, course design should be enriched by making full use of the functions of physical education, art and labor education in strengthening, nourishing and fortifying the mind; at the same time, a three-dimensional mental health education curriculum can be offered across all stages, including school-based compulsory mental health courses, elective mental health courses, peer growth group activity courses and group counseling courses; on the other hand, various campus activities can be held, such as fun sports meets for teachers and students, campus top ten singer contests and parent peer salons, so as to promote communication and cooperation among students, parents and teachers.

　　Filling the talent gap in the discipline and strengthening mental health diagnosis and treatment

　　The level of mental health and mental health diagnosis and treatment for adolescents bears on the identification, diagnosis and treatment of students' mental health problems. Lu Lin believes that there is still a great shortage of diagnostic and treatment resources and service capacity for adolescent mental health. Many difficulties, such as the severe shortage of child psychiatrists and beds, the need to improve the level of pediatricians, and the uneven distribution of mental health resources, have seriously hindered the diagnosis and treatment of mental and psychological disorders in children and adolescents.

　　Lu Lin suggested accelerating the development of the child psychiatry and psychology discipline and talent cultivation, expanding the scale of training medical students in child psychiatry, improving the doctor certification system, selecting a batch of demonstration bases for child and adolescent mental health diagnosis and treatment and teaching and training bases, and improving the overall quality of practitioners as well as their remuneration and social recognition, so that more outstanding medical students are willing to work in this field.

　　Regarding the issue of strengthening the diagnosis and treatment service system, Lu Lin said it is necessary to rely on the National Center for Mental Health, the National Children's Medical Center, regional medical centers and tertiary children's hospitals to establish national, provincial and regional centers for the diagnosis and treatment of child mental and psychological disorders, radiate and drive the development of child mental health specialties in prefecture-level cities and counties, and use information technology to build a regional screening and diagnosis network for child mental and psychological problems, forming a community of prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation featuring joint participation and mutual referral.

　　In addition, Lu Lin pointed out that it is necessary to promote a normalized and standardized hierarchical diagnosis and treatment model for mental and psychological care for children and adolescents, strengthen the management capacity of primary-level mental health institutions, and improve the efficiency of mental health resource utilization. At the same time, the psychological crisis intervention system should be improved, a normalized psychological rescue team for adolescents should be established, and the capacity for adolescent mental health and mental health diagnosis and treatment should be continuously enhanced.

　　Pooling the strength of all parties and promoting family-school-medical-social linkage

　　Protecting students' mental health requires the extensive support of all sectors of society in addition to the efforts of families, schools and the medical and health systems.

　　Lu Lin proposed that, through various forms of popular science publicity, public attention to child mental health can be increased, the public's mental health literacy can be improved, and an atmosphere in which the whole society pays attention to children's mental health can be created. Relevant sectors of society should also play an active role by providing psychological assistance and services to adolescents through public welfare projects and other forms. The media should play a guiding role in public opinion, publicize the importance of mental health and mental hygiene, and raise public awareness and attention.

　　“We need to establish a multi-party coordination mechanism among families, schools, medical institutions and society, and properly manage and guide students with different types of psychological problems,” Dong Qi said. Mental health is a dynamically developing continuum, and students' developmental problems, sub-health problems and disorder-related problems can transform into one another; different psychological illnesses, learning difficulties, maladjustment and other problems are often comorbid. He suggested that, for students at different stages and with different types of problems, the responsibilities of different parties should be clarified, the family-school-medical-social coordination mechanism, processes and corresponding normative documents should be defined, and a closed management loop for solving students' psychological problems should be formed.