63. Long term effect analysis of psychological health education courses for law students on the prevention of depression

Abstract Background Law students have become a high-risk group for psychological problems such as depression due to their high academic pressure, fierce competition for career prospects and general pursuit of perfectionism. Traditional mental health support mostly focuses on post-event intervention, while the effect of preventive educational intervention for this specific group has not been fully evaluated. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to develop and implement prevention-oriented and professionally targeted structured mental health education courses targeting the special risk factors of this group. This study aims to enhance the psychological resilience and emotional regulation abilities of law students by systematically evaluating the long-term effects of customized courses on preventing depression. Methods This study adopted a quasi-experimental design, selecting 300 students from the first to third years of a certain law school as the research subjects, and randomly divided them into an experimental group and a control group, each consisting of 150 students. The experimental group completed a semester-long customized mental health education course in addition to regular studies. The course content incorporates cognitive behavioral therapy principles, mindfulness-based stress reduction training, stress management techniques, self-care in professional ethics, and case studies on mental health for legal practitioners. The control group did not receive this course intervention. The study used the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Depression Scale, the Generalized Anxiety Scale, the Mental Resilience Scale and the Perceived Stress Scale as assessment tools to conduct follow-up assessments on all participants before the start of the course, at the end of the course, and 6 months and 12 months after the end of the course. Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and generalized linear mixed models. Results The results showed that there was a significant difference (p