Psychological education vital

Police suspect that a postgraduate medical student in Shanghai died after being poisoned by a roommate. Similar cases have drawn the authorities' attention to the relationship among roommates in university dormitories. In fact, a recent survey shows that students now consider the dorm a complicated place, reflecting their poor psychological health, says an article in Guangzhou Daily. Excerpts:

University students in China generally suffer from two types of psychological problems because little attention is paid to their psychological education in senior and junior schools, where the focus is on scoring subjects.

Some schools do organize a few lectures on psychological counseling guidance before some big exams, and that's it. Moreover, most mental health education is about theoretical knowledge, which cannot help students in practical life.

Even if a student gets admission to a top university, it doesn't mean that he or she is psychologically healthy. Also, because of parents' and teachers' emphasis on test scores, students' psychological health tends to get ignored.

But we should not wait until some serious incidents, like a suicide or crime, takes place to realize the importance of psychological education. Thus it's necessary for colleges and universities to hold psychological education classes for freshmen for their initiation into campus life.

Although the Ministry of Education has made it mandatory for universities to have a compulsory psychology course with full-time teachers to ensure students' psychological health, many schools and parents still don't think highly of it. Therefore, more needs to be done to change the situation.

(China Daily 05/03/2013 page9)