Abstract Background With accelerating population aging, geriatric mental health issues (depression, anxiety, cognitive impairments) are increasingly prominent. As frontline caregivers, nurses in elderly care institutions directly impact the elderly’s quality of life and rehabilitation through their recognition and intervention capabilities. However, systematic mental health training for this group remains insufficient in China, with no adequate empirical evidence on its effectiveness. Thus, this study uses structured nursing education to improve nurses’ ability to identify common geriatric mental disorders and their intervention confidence, and evaluates its practical impact on enhancing the elderly’s mental health outcomes. Methods A total of 240 nursing staff were recruited from 12 elderly care facilities and randomly divided into an educational intervention group (n = 120) and a routine training group (n = 120). The intervention group received specialized mental health training twice weekly for 8 weeks, covering symptom recognition, risk assessment, non-pharmacological interventions, and communication skills, while the control group only participated in the facilities’ regular training. Assessments were conducted using the Nurses’ Mental Health Recognition Scale (NS-MHRS) and Geriatric Mental Symptom Management Confidence Scale (GS-MCS) at pre-training (T0), post-training (T2), and 3 months post-training (T3). Meanwhile, 240 elderly individuals cared for by each group’s staff were randomly selected, with their mental health evaluated via the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 (GDS-15) and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Results Pre- and post-training assessments of nurses’ competence and elderly health in both groups showed significant effects (Table 1). As shown in Table 1, the intervention group demonstrated significant improvements: recognition accuracy increased from 62.4% ± 10.2% to 85.3% ± 8.7% (p.001), and management confidence rose from 45.3 ± 6.8 to 68.9 ± 7.2 points (p.001), with no significant changes observed in the control group. These enhanced capabilities directly contributed to improved health outcomes among the elderly: depressive symptoms decreased from 9.5 ± 3.2 to 6.8 ± 2.9 points (p.001), and cognitive function increased from 24.1 ± 2.8 to 25.6 ± 2.5 points (p.01), with both improvements being significantly greater than those in the control group. Discussion The 8-week structured nursing education effectively enhanced nursing staff’s capabilities in recognizing and intervening in mental health disorders in elderly care settings, and significantly improved the depressive symptoms and cognitive function of the elderly under their care. This indicates that systematic specialized training can be practically translated into higher-quality care practices, providing empirical support for promoting standardized mental health training in elderly care facilities. Future research may further optimize the training model and content combination, and conduct long-term follow-ups to assess the sustainability of effects and long-term impacts on the elderly’s quality of life, thereby laying a foundation for formulating sustainable and personalized training programs.
Fenglin Wang (Sun,) studied this question.
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