A Study On The Correlation Between Boarding And The Mental Health Of Junior High School Students

In order to improve the quality of rural compulsory education and allocate equitably educational resources,national rural schools have adjusted their distribution continuously.Currently,boarding school has become the school-running pattern in rural areas.This boarding pattern solved the realistic difficulties for the rural schools.However,it also brings some challenges in the process of number increase and scale expansion of school.Among them,the mental health issues that are related to the growth and development of boarding students has become the point of focus.In the short term,mental health has directly affects whether students can adapt to boarding school,and then avoid psychological and behavioral problems.In the long term,mental health is not only related to the individual adults of social adaptation,production efficiency and economic income,but also concerns about development of talent pool and social stability and harmony.At present,the boarding status of rural junior middle school students presents such new characteristics as boarding younger and parents accompany reading with rent.If researches use idiomatic method "current boarding status" to divide students into boarding students and day students,could omits those students that past boarded school but now rent with family,underestimate the correlation between boarding and mental health,at the same time ignor whether boarding younger has continuous effect on meatal health.Therefore,we should consider complexity and variability of boarding status when research the mental health issue of rural boarding students.Except "now boarding status",we should regard "start grade of boarding" and " boarding experience" as important indicators.Through existing research,it is generally believed that boarding students have poorer mental health.However,we lack of large sample empirical research which focus on the mental health issue of junior middle school students in rural boarding schools,and there is a few researches dig into the correlation between "start grade of boarding","boarding experience" and mental health.Based on the above background,the purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between boarding and mental health,and provide basis and suggestions for improving the mental health development of junior middle school students in rural boarding schools.To achieve this goal,our study selected randomly 9250 junior middle school students from 75 boarding schools in rural areas of Shaanxi province.The junior middle school student basic situation questionnaire and the mental health diagnostic test(MHT)were used as measuring tools.The research divides boarding into three variables of "current boarding status","start grade of boarding" and "boarding experience".Firstly,described the boarding status and mental health status of junior high school students in rural areas.Secondly,research used OLS regression to analyze the correlation between each boarding variable and mental health that included overall levels of mental health and individual anxiety tendency.Finally,presented the heterogeneity analysis result based on gender variables.The following conclusions are obtained:(1)Boarding has become an important growth experience for students in rural areas.The proportion of students that have boarding experience is bigger than students that currently boarding schools,and third and seventh grades are the peak period for students to start boarding.(2)The overall levels of mental health of junior middle school students in rural areas is in good status,but a high percentage of junior middle school students in rural areas have individual anxiety tendency.Study anxiety is the most prominent psychological problem.(3)The "current boarding status" and "starting boarding grade" are not related to the overall levels of mental health,there is a significant correlation between "boarding experience" and overall levels of mental health.There is an underestimation effect that using "current boarding status" as measure standard of overall levels of mental health.Comparative speaking,the "boarding experience" is a stable indicator,it can accurately predict overall levels of mental health.(4)The "current boarding status" is related to the sensitivity tendency,body anxiety,phobia anxiety;The "starting boarding grade" is only related to the self-blaming tendency;The "boarding experience" is related to the personal anxiety,loneliness tendency,sensitivity tendency,body anxiety,phobia anxiety and implusive tendency.There is an underestimation effect that using "current boarding status" as measure standard of individual anxiety tendency.(5)The mental health level of the girls who have boarding experience as a junior middle school students in rural areas were worse,and more attention need to paid to the difference in mental health generated by gender.Finally,some suggestions that improve the mental health of rural boarding school students are given in this study from different level of family,school,government.On the one hand,we will comprehensively improve the mental health level of all rural junior high school students,promote the development of individual life,and reserve qualified personnel for social progress.On the other hand,we need pay more attention to the mental health of boarding students,especially the vulnerable groups such as female boarders,young boarders and liuji boarders.