Global Reference: Professional Qualifications to Empower Mental Health Education in Primary and Secondary Schools

Abstract

Focusing on the current post-epidemic era, this study explores how to draw lessons from international models of professional qualification systems for psychological practitioners and training approaches for school mental health education practitioners. This exploration is based on analyzing issues within China's higher education system, including the training methods and enrollment trends for psychology-related graduate programs, the current state of professional qualification certification in the social mental health practice field, and the developmental challenges facing mental health education in primary and secondary schools. The core objective is to cultivate professional degree graduates possessing specialized professional qualification competencies suitable for mental health education in primary and secondary schools. To this end, a reform of the training model for psychology professional degree graduates is proposed, centered on the dual roles of "counselor + teacher". This reform aims to optimize and establish effective articulation pathways between "psychology professional degree graduate education" and "qualification certification for mental health practitioners in primary and secondary schools". Ultimately, it seeks to provide theoretical guidance and practical solutions for the domestic primary and secondary school mental health service system under the guidance of the "big health concept".