During the COVID-19 epidemic, School ofMaterial Science and Engineering (SMSE) paid close attention to the mental health of its students, always accompanying and serving students. The faculty of the school brought warmth and strength to their students, helping them build a psychological front against the COVID-19 epidemic, thereby could facilitate the overall movement of resuming study in an orderly and safe way in campus.
Guard every student’s mental health
As a saying goes ‘It takes a good blacksmith to make steel’, to protect the full development of students’ mental health and enhance teachers’ own counseling capacity, the faculty of SMSE actively participated in various mental health trainingsby cloud-based commuting, laying a solid foundation for implementing jobs of epidemic control.
During the winter vacation, the school carried out a thorough investigation on 905 undergraduates and postgraduates about their current mentalcondition. With the support of the online platform of Wenjuanxing, all the questionnaires were given out, through which the faculty were able to have a deeper understanding about students’ mental health. Specifically, for more than 300 students who were from Hubei having difficulties related to their families and studies, the faculty members provided them with the one-on-one communication and mentoring via telecommuting. By doing so, it made a great contribution to cope with emergencies and demands by these flexible coping tactics and targeted supports.
After those first students going back to school, the faculty of SMSE paid close attention to their study and daily lives, immediately visiting their dormitories and having face-to-face communications with them in order to know if they could adapt to the new order in the epidemic control. All of these measures aimed to help students maintain a positive attitude and stable mood in such situation and fit in the gradually busy study life.
The one-on-one communication and investigation
The counselor visiting students’ dormitory
Nurture mental health by cloud-based knowledge competition
To further enhance the awareness of self-protection from COVID-19 and to encourage more students to have a good command of methods and knowledge about emotional regulations and mental health, a knowledge competition named‘CupofShanghaiMedical Education’was organized by School of Material Science and Engineering, on the topic of the psychology about epidemic control. The competition attracted 618 students of the whole university to participate. It not only widely popularized the knowledge of psychologicalhealth, but also helped students to embrace and deal with unhealthy emotions applying scientific methods. The outstanding performance of students showed in the competition also represented the energetic and zealous style towards their study.
The student taking part in the knowledge competition
Create harmonious atmosphere between friends
To mentally create a positive atmosphere and a bonding time between the commissary in charge of mental health and each student, the school launched a live-streamed lecture on the topic of ‘Obsessive-compulsive Disorder of Staying Up Late’.This lecture was aimed to help students to improve their sleeping habits and boost their studying efficiency. The live streamer, Zhang Sheng, discussed a series of problems around the OCD of staying up late and also popularized various professional terminologies and knowledge about its clinical symptoms to students. Additionally, not only did he displayed some different behaviors and psychological features of 3 patients, but also shared some tips to cope with these problems. This live stream was fairly interesting and educational, attracting more than 1300 students to watch and actively interact, through which students were able to find ways to study effectively and maintain a healthy life style.
Launching these educational activities about mental health, all faculty members of SMSE flung themselves into the psychological field of epidemic control and tightly guard the psychological crutch of epidemic prevention. Furthermore, by these means students were encouraged to correctly face the epidemic and regulate their moods through scientific management. The faculty and students along with the whole school were making concerted efforts to strive for the win-win situation on controlling epidemic and resuming study.
The highlight of live-streamed lecture
