Abstract Background Psychological problems among contemporary college students are on the rise. Many students are troubled by emotions such as anxiety and depression due to academic pressure, the uncertainty of interpersonal relationships and future plans. This leads to most students suffering from severe emotional disorders, which affects their learning concentration and language acquisition ability. As a subject that highly relies on cognitive input and emotional interaction, the teaching process of English precisely provides a natural field for psychological intervention. To conduct psychological intervention for students, this study aims to integrate mental health nursing knowledge into college English teaching and explore new intervention approaches. Methods Two parallel English classes in a certain university were selected as the research objects in the study. One class was set as the experimental group and the other as the control group. The experimental group integrated the theme contents related to mental health care, such as emotion management, stress coping and self-awareness modules, on the basis of conventional English teaching, and conducted teaching in combination with English reading, writing and oral expression. The control group, on the other hand, only received regular English teaching and no content related to mental health was involved. After a four-month teaching intervention, the changes in psychological flexibility were evaluated using the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II). Meanwhile, the study used the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) to conduct a before-and-after comparison of the degree of depression. Results Before the teaching intervention was carried out, there was no significant difference in the scores of the two groups of students on the AAQ-II and SDS scales, and the baseline levels of psychological flexibility and depression were consistent (p.05). After 4 months of intervention, the AAQ-II score of students in group A decreased significantly from 41.34 ± 1.26 before the intervention to 22.57 ± 1.08. However, the AAQ-II score of students in group B only decreased from 40.98 ± 1.32 to 38.45 ± 1.17, and the difference between the groups was statistically significant (p.05). Meanwhile, the SDS score of the experimental group decreased from 40.76 ± 2.15 before the intervention to 22.33 ± 1.89, while that of the control group only decreased from 40.54 ± 2.21 to 37.68 ± 2.03. The difference was also statistically significant (p.05). The degree of emotional disorder relief among students in Group A was better than that in group B. Discussion It can be known from the research results that integrating mental health care knowledge into English teaching can significantly enhance students’ psychological flexibility and alleviate depressive moods. When students’ emotional disorders are effectively intervened, their cognitive load in language learning is significantly reduced. The current research has only analyzed a relatively small sample case. Future studies will further expand the sample size, optimize the phased design of intervention content, and explore the possibility of embedding personalized psychological support systems based on artificial intelligence technology into English classrooms.
Deng et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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