63. Long term effect analysis of psychological health education courses for law students on the prevention of depression
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Background Law students have become a high-risk group for psychological problems such as depression due to their high academic pressure, fierce competition for career prospects and general pursuit of perfectionism. Traditional mental health support mostly focuses on post-event intervention, while the effect of preventive educational intervention for this specific group has not been fully evaluated. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to develop and implement prevention-oriented and professionally targeted structured mental health education courses targeting the special risk factors of this group. This study aims to enhance the psychological resilience and emotional regulation abilities of law students by systematically evaluating the long-term effects of customized courses on preventing depression. Methods This study adopted a quasi-experimental design, selecting 300 students from the first to third years of a certain law school as the research subjects, and randomly divided them into an experimental group and a control group, each consisting of 150 students. The experimental group completed a semester-long customized mental health education course in addition to regular studies. The course content incorporates cognitive behavioral therapy principles, mindfulness-based stress reduction training, stress management techniques, self-care in professional ethics, and case studies on mental health for legal practitioners. The control group did not receive this course intervention. The study used the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Depression Scale, the Generalized Anxiety Scale, the Mental Resilience Scale and the Perceived Stress Scale as assessment tools to conduct follow-up assessments on all participants before the start of the course, at the end of the course, and 6 months and 12 months after the end of the course. Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and generalized linear mixed models. Results The results showed that there was a significant difference (p<.001) in the development trajectory of depression symptoms between the experimental group and the control group after controlling for baseline depression levels. Specifically, at the end of the course, the experimental group had significantly lower scores on the depression scale compared to the control group (p<.001), while their scores on the psychological resilience scale were significantly higher (p<.001). During the one-year follow-up period, although the level of depressive symptoms in the experimental group fluctuated slightly, their depression scale scores remained significantly lower than those in the control group at 6 and 12 months after the course ended (p<.001), and this difference was statistically significant. The results showed that the effects of the course intervention were maintained to a certain extent one year after the intervention ended. Discussion This study shows that systematic mental health education courses designed according to the characteristics of law students can not only effectively reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and improve psychological resilience in the short term, but also have long-term sustainability of the preventive effect for up to one year. However, the study also found that the intervention effect had a weak attenuation trend at the end of the follow-up period. Future research needs to explore intensive courses or stepped intervention models to consolidate long-term effects.
Source: Schizophrenia Bulletin
Authors: E Er Dun Ba Gen, Hui Zhao
Language: English
Topic: Student Stress and Coping
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7128766988
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