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Graduate students face increasing academic and psychological pressures, making it important to identify educational practices associated with their mental health. This study examined the association between labor education and graduate students’ mental health by constructing a moderated mediation model. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1283 full-time graduate students in Chinese universities. Structural equation modeling and PROCESS analyses were used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results showed that labor education was positively associated with graduate students’ mental health. Bootstrap analyses further supported three sequential mediation pathways: self-efficacy and psychological resilience, meaning in life and time management ability, and problem-solving ability and emotion regulation ability. These indirect pathways collectively account for approximately 40% of the total effect. In addition, supervisor support was found to strengthen the positive association between labor education and self-efficacy, while peer support strengthened the positive association between labor education and problem-solving ability. These findings suggest that labor education may function as a resource-building educational practice in graduate training and that academic social support may condition its association with students’ psychological and behavioral resources. This study contributes to research on graduate student well-being by linking labor education with psychological resources, cognitive appraisal, behavioral adaptation, and academic social support.
Deng et al. (Fri,) studied this question.