The Relationship Between Anger And Mental Health And The Intervention On Anger Among College Students

Anger is a kind of basic emotion of human which is common reaction when people meet frustration. However, maladaptive anger can lead to poor health and negative social outcomes. Currently, many college students have mental health problems, as the self-suicide or campus violence happens frequently among college students. These maybe have some relationships with that the college students cannot handle their anger emotion properly. So it's meaningful to identify the relationship between anger and mental health and to find the effective means to deal with the anger emotion. The purposes of the study were:1. To analyze the relationships between anger features and mental health among the college students.2. To analyze the relationship between forgiveness and anger of college students, in order to guide the next research.3. To observe the impact of forgiveness intervention on the expression of anger of college students.Research I:Correlative study on anger and mental health among college students.Method:We recruited 248 college students to complete the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2(STAXI-2), the General Health Questionnaire(GHQ-28) and Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-18(TRIM-18). Then the independent-Samples T test was used to see the gender differences on anger factors. The relations between anger and mental health of the college students were checked by the Pearson correlation analysis; multiple regression analysis was used to see the impact of anger traits on the general mental health status. Results:â‘ Men had higher anger-in, anger control-out than women (P<0.05).â‘¡Both the experience and expression of anger were correlated with general mental health.â‘¢The state anger, trait anger, anger-in and anger control contribute to the general mental health notably (P<0.05).Researchâ…¡:The relationship between forgiveness and anger of college studentsMethod:The students that we recruited were required to answer the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-18(TRIM-18), when they filled in STAXI-2 and GHQ-28. The relations between forgiveness and anger of the college students were checked by the Pearson correlation analysis. The differences on anger features between individuals low in forgiveness and high in forgiveness were analyzed by the independent-Samples T test.Results:â‘ Avoidance and revenge motivations toward a transgressor were positively correlated with state anger, trait anger, anger-in and anger-out, and negatively correlated with anger-control. Benevolence motivation and forgiveness had negative correlations with state anger, trait anger, anger-in and anger-out, and positive correlations with anger-control.â‘¡Individuals low in forgiveness were higher on state anger, trait anger, anger-in, and anger-out, and lower on anger control than those high in forgiveness (P<0.01).Researchâ…¢:Forgiveness intervention on anger expression of college studentsMethods:According to the forgiveness level of all the subjects which checked by the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-18,26 subjects whose forgiveness level were one standard deviation lower than the mean were included. And randomly divided them into two equal groups:the experimental group and the control group. They were required to recall their anger experiences. Heart rate(HR), skin conduct(SC) were used to reflect the physio-arousal level of anger at that moment. Then let the experimental group give their anger experiences the positive cognition evaluation. While let the control group relax for 5 minutes. Then require the subjects to recall their anger experiences again. The HR and SC were record also. Then every subjects need to fill in the state anger invention of Speilberger. One month later, the trait anger invention and the anger expression invention designed by Speilberger were filled in by every subject.Results:The HR of the persons in both the experimental group and the control group was higher when they recall their anger experience than that in relaxing condition, the HR and SC of the experimental group were lower than the control group after treated with the forgiveness intervention (P<0.05), as well as the state anger (P<0.05). There was no difference between the experimental group and the control group on the trait anger and anger expression styles (P>0.05).We have reached the conclusions as follows:1. Compared to female students, male students don't like to express their emotions, especially negative emotions. Thus, they always hold their anger inward. Moreover, they make more cognitive endeavor to prevent the expression of anger through controlling outward expression of anger.2. The anger features do have some association and the mental health among the college students. Such as, individuals who experience their anger frequently and intensely would tend to express their anger in maladaptive ways and thus bring more negative mental health consequences from their anger. Individuals who always hold anger in may easily develop mental disorders, which also affect their general mental health. The capability of anger control which benefits the mental health could profit one's social adjustment.3. Persons low in forgiveness would experience their anger frequently and intensely. They may put it in or show it out. But their capabilities of anger-control are not well, so they tend to do more impulsive behaviors.4. The benefit-finding and empathy technique was well as a forgive intervention which could let down the expression of anger at the moment. The impacts of the once intervention on the stable anger traits such as trait anger, anger-in, anger-out weren't notable. The impact on anger-control was also not notable, but it had showed the tendency already. More studies are needed to clarify this question.