Abstract
Psychological education is an important part of modern education, and all walks of life attach great importance to the mental health of college students. At present, under the background of virtual reality (VR) technology era, it is necessary to further enrich the ways and methods of mental health education and improve the effectiveness of mental health education. Combining positive psychology theory with VR technology, this paper discusses the advantages and ways of applying positive psychology and VR technology in mental health work in colleges and universities. This paper expounds the basic content and theoretical basis of positive psychology and enlightens the future development direction of college students’ mental health education with the theory of positive psychology. Through data mining, this paper explores the rules and characteristics of college students’ mental health, digs out the potential relationships among various factors affecting mental health and puts forward the methods to solve psychological problems using VR technology in combination with cognitive theory and chaos theory. I hope to make some contributions to the field of mental health.
1. Introduction
College students are the key force to influence the future development of the country, and they bear the expectations of parents and society [1]. Therefore, it is of great significance for modern students to have a positive body, mind, and personality. With the rapid development of economy and society, contemporary college students are facing great psychological pressure and burden [2]. As they encounter more and more difficulties and setbacks in their study, life, and social adaptation, the problem of psychological abnormality is becoming more and more serious, causing people’s concern and worry [3]. College students’ mental health education, as an important aspect of higher education, has attracted attention from all sides. “Cultivating college students’ healthy psychology and forming good psychological quality” has become an important task of colleges and universities [4]. However, the function of mental health education in most schools is mainly focused on prevention and treatment, aiming at solving the problems of a few students and ignoring the psychological development needs of most students. Moreover, the traditional treatment methods of mental illness expose the weakness of monotony and inefficiency. This is the main problem that college students are facing in the process of mental health education. While positive psychology changes the previous teaching angle and devotes itself to tapping the potential of college students, it can achieve the effect of promoting the mental health of all college students and make the mental health education of college students more perfect [5].
With the advent of virtual reality (VR) technology era, it has brought new changes to human development, and it is also true for mental health education [6]. Colleges and universities in China mostly use student consultation and teacher guidance to solve students’ psychological problems, while some foreign researchers have applied VR technology to the treatment of psychological diseases and achieved good results [7]. The development of VR technology has gradually affected many fields and has an important impact on mental health work. It is of brand-new significance to study the treatment system of mental illness based on the integration of positive psychology and VR technology [8]. It not only helps to improve the educational concept and expand the educational approach but also helps to achieve the goal of college students’ mental health education, thus promoting the improvement of college students’ psychological quality [9]. This paper expounds the basic content and theoretical basis of positive psychology in detail, and highlights the value of positive psychology for college students’ mental health education from the perspectives of goal, connotation, and innovation. The characteristics and advantages of VR technology are analyzed, and the guiding theory of VR mental health work is given. This paper focuses on the application of VR technology with positive psychology in contemporary college students’ psychotherapy. Its innovations are as follows:(i)This paper takes the concept of positive psychology and VR technology as the research perspective, takes strengthening the mental health education of college students as the starting point and destination, starts with the present situation of mental health education of college students, and pays attention to interdisciplinary reference and combination. The article updated the research content and expanded the research perspective.(ii)In this paper, the data mining algorithm is applied to the data analysis of college students’ mental health, and the information of students’ mental dynamic data is collected in time, and the influence of class structure and mental health factors hidden in data attributes of students’ mental health on clustering results is discovered. The algorithm effectively shortens the initialization time and reduces the generation of candidate item sets. It has advantages in computing time and space complexity.(iii)Take college students as the investigation objects and master the current situation of college students’ mental health education by understanding and comprehensively analyze the investigation results. From the results, some rules and characteristics of college students’ psychological related factors are analyzed, and the concept of positive psychology and VR technology are applied to the adjustment of college students’ psychological health, so as to provide support for early prevention and intervention of college students’ psychological disorders.
The main contents and chapters of this paper are as follows:
First, this paper summarizes the mental health education of college students from the perspective of positive psychology, explains the concepts of mental health, mental health education of college students and positive psychology, and introduces the theoretical basis of this study. This paper analyzes the objectives and objects of the current mental health education and comprehensively summarizes the problems existing in the current mental health of college students. Then, it explores the application of VR technology with positive psychology theory in the adjustment method of college students’ mental health. Through the algorithm, various potential relationships among students’ psychological data are excavated. Finally, experiments are carried out to prove the effectiveness and practicability of the algorithm.
2. Related Work
Wu et al. investigated the problems of college students’ mental health from the perspective of positive psychology by means of questionnaires, and analyzed the causes of the problems from four aspects: school, family, society, and college students [10]. Zhang et al. put forward the principles and countermeasures of mental health education for college students from the perspective of positive psychology [1]. Guided by positive psychology, Burckhardt et al. carried out the mental health education of college students from the perspective of positive psychology by taking the school, family, society, and self-education of college students as a way. It can effectively improve the mental health level of college students through the joint influence of internal factors and external factors [11]. Through a comprehensive analysis of various disciplines, Gameon et al. found the point of convergence between positive psychology and mental health education, in order to make breakthroughs in the research on issues related to college students’ mental health education [12]. Lianov et al. pointed out that most colleges and universities adopt the traditional psychology education model based on the tendency of problem awareness, regard students with psychological problems as the focus of mental health education work and ignore the cultivation of the positive qualities of most students [13]. Tejada-Gallardo et al. pointed out that the mental health level of college students will be related to the quality of national construction personnel training, so it is very necessary and urgent to strengthen and pay attention to the mental health education of college students [14]. Tikhonov et al. believe that positive psychology requires psychologists to use a more open and appreciative perspective to look at people’s potential, motivation, and ability, to focus on the positive aspects of human nature, and to help ordinary people live healthier lives, better, and promote the prosperity of society [15]. Marksteiner et al. believe that the object of psychotherapy should be regarded as the whole person, rather than the carrier of the disease. It is necessary to see not only the disease but also the potential of the person. Through psychotherapy, the seeker can build up confidence and hope and mobilize his own potential [16]. Wilczewski et al. designed an AR psychotherapy system framework based on OpenGL, and discussed technologies such as OpenGL and 3DMAX three-dimensional modeling, collision detection, and human-computer interaction [17]. In order to comprehensively and deeply understand the mental health status of contemporary college students, Modabber et al. constructed a psychotherapy process model for contemporary college students and used the AR psychotherapy system to treat college students’ mental illness [18].
Based on the previous studies on college students’ mental health, this paper analyzes the current situation of college students’ mental health. The positive psychology theory and VR technology will be combined to solve the mental health problems of college students. The data mining algorithm is used to analyze some rules and characteristics of college students’ psychological related factors, as well as the influence of class structure hidden in mental health data attributes and mental health factors on clustering results. This paper puts forward the contents that can promote the all-round development of college students, improve their psychological quality, enhance their subjective well-being, and promote the development of their potential.
3. Mental Health Problems of College Students from the Perspective of Positive Psychology
Psychological education aims at cultivating psychological quality and solving psychological problems which include psychological training, psychological counseling, and psychotherapy [19]. Traditional psychology is characterized by negativity, weakness, and problem consciousness. In the past psychological research process, traditional psychology showed people more problems [20]. And there are far more negative studies than positive ones, ignoring the exploration and cultivation of potential and positive forces.
Positive psychology is a supplement to the development of contemporary psychology, which makes psychology more comprehensive, reasonable, and balanced [21]. College students’ mental health education from the perspective of positive psychology is a practical activity of mental health education aimed at student groups, guided by the theories and practices of positive psychology and college students’ mental health education, based on the characteristics and laws of college students’ development, and aiming at cultivating students’ positive psychological quality. The main viewpoints of positive psychology are as follows: (1) Realizing the value balance of psychology. (2) Emphasize the study of everyone’s positive power. (3) Advocate a positive explanation of the problem. The study of active mental health education for college students is a work aimed at improving happiness, developing self-potential, and cultivating positive qualities. Positive psychology focuses on the positive side of individuals, improves the happiness of individuals, and devotes itself to the positive qualities and advantages of people. It is different from traditional psychology, which only pays attention to the negative aspects of food [22]. While paying attention to the negative aspects, positive psychology pays more attention to the inner strength and excellent quality of individuals themselves.
Positive psychology studies positive organizational systems. It holds that people’s experience and potential are reflected in positive social organizational systems such as healthy families, well-connected communities and effective schools, and are also influenced by them. The principles of college students’ mental health education from the perspective of positive psychology include: subjectivity principle, motivation principle, experience principle, development principle, and infectivity principle. Some measures in traditional psychology are mainly aimed at eliminating problems, focusing only on people’s own shortcomings, so as to prevent the occurrence of problems and achieve the preventive effect. It opposes pessimistic view of human nature and turns to attach importance to positive aspects of human nature [23]. Positive psychology stimulates the positive potential of college students by strengthening their inner strength and puts forward educational ideas and training modes in combination with their psychological needs. According to the development of college students’ future life, they can educate and strengthen their learning and improve their intrinsic potential and strength. Psychology actively and profoundly grasps the characteristics of college students’ psychological development and develops targeted and diversified educational contents, so that college students can actively accept and actively internalize educational contents, so that education can really get into their minds.
Positive psychotherapy is a psychotherapy guided by positive psychology. Positive psychotherapy system mainly includes psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, and people-centered therapy. Positive psychotherapy believes that there has always been a major problem in traditional psychotherapy, that is, focusing work on the evaluation or treatment of patients’ pain, doing a lot of research on the negative effects of some external stressors on patients’ psychology, and treating mental diseases with the mode of doctors treating patients’ physical diseases. However, positive psychology is to abandon the practice of treating people with psychological problems as carriers of diseases [24]. It advocates paying attention to people’s positive power, facing problems with a positive attitude, and believes that it can stimulate the potential of patients and enable them to actively deal with their psychological and behavioral problems, so as to become a healthy person. Active psychologists believe that in the treatment of mental illness, besides some technologies with special effects, there are other important factors that affect the treatment effect, that is, what they call “depth strategy” factors, that is, some personality forces with alleviating effects.
4. Methodology
4.1. Psychological Data Mining and Analysis of College Students
Association rule mining is an important branch of data mining research, and association rule is one of the most typical knowledge types of data mining [25]. It indicates that there is a certain correlation between a group of objects in the data transaction set. Association rules are characterized by concise form, easy explanation, and understanding, and can effectively capture important relationships between data. Association rules can be expressed as: , In which: . Support indicates how often the rule appears in the transaction set, and confidence indicates how often Y appears in things that contain X. The formula is as follows:where: M represents the number of transactions.
Determining business objects is an important first step in data mining. First of all, we should make clear the purpose of data mining and clearly define business problems. In the process of mining rules that meet the requirements, users can not only guide the whole mining process of association rules but also adjust the minimum support and minimum trust in time according to the actual situation, so as to achieve a more ideal mining effect, which makes the whole mining process more flexible and controllable. The application of information entropy in information theory mainly measures the ordering degree of the system. The information entropy is inversely proportional to the ordering degree of the system, and its value gradually decreases with the increase of the ordering degree of the system. The expression of information entropy in the case of one-dimensional variable and multidimensional variable is defined as follows:
For various reasons, incomplete, noisy, and inconsistent data will exist in large databases or data warehouses. Cleaning up data is to deal with the missing values of some attributes of data. There are 16 factors related to college students’ psychological analysis in the data we obtained. We can preprocess these data to better improve our mining efficiency and accuracy.
As the results of data mining will eventually be provided to the staff of the school’s psychological counseling center and student management department, they are not familiar with data mining technology, so we should fully consider the readability of mining results when choosing algorithms. The large data transaction set is divided into several disjoint transaction sets, then each transaction set is mined by association rules to obtain local frequent item sets and then merged into global candidate item sets, and then a series of mining is carried out to finally obtain the global frequent item sets. Use formulas (3) and (4) to calculate the threshold of behavior tendency of psychological problems caused by different reasons:
After data cleaning, invalid data are deleted to replace useful missing data. Usually, the first step of learning is used to construct a model expressed by formulas or rules. Using this model can classify other samples, and at the same time, it can provide a deeper understanding for the database. The transaction set is transformed into Boolean matrix, and the process of mining frequent sets is transformed into the operation of matrix. This greatly improves the operation efficiency to a certain extent. The process of psychological data mining for college students is shown in Figure 1.
With each test sample in the test data set, the predicted class learned according to the classification model is compared with the known class label. If they are the same, the classification is successful; if they are different, the classification is unsuccessful. The main idea of class merging is: first, merge adjacent classes pairwise to regroup into small class pairs, and then judge whether the small class pairs can be merged through the evaluation function, and then observe whether the small class pairs are evenly distributed. Through data classification and preprocessing, the invalid data are cleared, the mental health database of college students is established, and the data table is established.
Let node N store all samples of data partition D. The expected information needed to classify the samples in D is given by the following formula:In the formula: is the probability that any sample in D belongs to and is calculated by . In fact, the above formula is just the ratio of the number of samples of each class to the total number of samples used. Info (D) is also called the entropy of D. Entropy is a statistic that measures how chaotic a system is. Suppose the samples in D are divided by attribute A, which has distinct values:
If the value of attribute A is discrete, then attribute A can divide D into subsets:In the formula:, the value of the sample in on attribute A is the value . These subsets correspond to the branches that grow from node N. The expected information needed to classify samples of D based on the division by attribute A, which can be given as follows:In the formula: DJ/D is the weight of the subset whose value is value aj on attribute A. InfoA(D) is the desired information needed to classify D’s samples based on attribute A’s division.
Processing the information can reduce the investigation space. On this basis, the algorithm is used to mine association rules from the data. On one hand, the relationship between certain factors can be studied. On the other hand, we can get the information we need more accurately, which makes the purpose of the research more clear.
Data integration is to integrate related data together according to the mining objectives to build a new and tightly coupled data set. According to some users’ interest points, a subset of the transaction set is taken as the data mining target. After generating the item set, the corresponding weights are set for the elements in the item set. Then, the corresponding support is calculated according to the support calculation function with weights to generate frequent sets, and then the association rules are generated.
4.2. Application of VR Technology in Psychological Treatment of College Students
VR technology has unique advantages because of its immersion, interaction, and imagination. It has been used in education, medical care, industrial design, and other fields and has been paid more and more attention by researchers all over the world. VR technology has a very important feature, that is, it provides customers with a realistic real-time interactive 3D virtual environment through some special equipment and computer technology. Users can change the virtual environment according to their own wishes through the interaction between the sensor device and the virtual environment. It can produce a strong feeling and experience of “being in person.” Therefore, VR technology can not only be used to demonstrate the media but also be used as a tool for various engineering designs.
The technical features and advantages of VR are as follows: (1) Using VR technology, you can make a virtual high-altitude scene, and let the experiencer feel and experience in the virtual scene, without being limited by space and immerse himself repeatedly in the experience. (2) The VR world is full of unknowns, inspiring the parties to explore and discover. Students can exert their imagination and creativity and conduct personalized learning. (3) VR technology creates real experience situations for students in counseling and counseling of psychological problems, makes psychological training more intuitive and visual, and helps students understand professional psychotherapy. The security and operability of VR in the world ensure that the educated can make various attempts here and find the right method that suits them through trial and error. In this process, it also adds interest. Contemporary college students’ psychotherapy is a complex and continuous process, which consists of four stages. (1) problem discovery stage. This process is the key to effective treatment of sick students. (2) Diagnostic stage. At this stage, it is necessary to formulate targeted, rational, and scientific VR treatment measures according to the real situation of sick students. (3) Treatment stage. At the same time of treatment, psychologists need to give specific guidance. (4) Consolidation stage. Psychologists should appropriately encourage and make timely adjustments to the treatment plan according to the actual treatment effect. The frame of psychotherapy system based on VR technology is shown in Figure 2.
VR technology is a new tool for mental health work, and its rational and effective use needs the support and guidance of psychological counseling and therapy theory. Cognition refers to the process of information processing with external things through feeling, perception, memory, imagination, thinking, and language. Chaos theory means that the arbitrary motion of the system is regarded as the internal arbitrary decision of the system itself, and the development process of the system presents two linear alternating processes, which are linear and nonlinear. Using VR technology, students can be placed in a virtual environment, visit, experience, and conduct various psychological and behavioral trainings in a real-time interactive way, so that a large number of students can get immersive experience. It can show the sick college students all kinds of important life scenes he has experienced before, so that he can clearly and truly realize his own advantages and disadvantages.
In the process of treating college students with VR technology treatment system, patients have to communicate and interact with the treatment system, usually through related interactive devices. In VR environment, in order to avoid unnatural phenomena such as people crossing walls, the system must detect the relative positions of people and things in VR environment, judge whether they collide or not, and make a correct response. At present, a variety of psychological counseling and therapy theories have been applied to VR mental health work, such as exposure therapy, systematic desensitization, and empirical cognition. It can be used in the treatment of psychological diseases such as anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, autism, and depression. VR technology is applied to college students’ psychotherapy, which can cross the boundaries of time and space, and make sick students feel and respond to the virtual environment intuitively and vividly.
5. Result Analysis and Discussion
In this chapter, the survey results of students in a university in 2021 are selected as mining data. There is no uniform standard for mental health due to its various manifestations. This chapter takes some data of freshmen’s psychological evaluation in a university as the original data transaction set and constructs the item set from the dimensions of gender, grade, major category, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, paranoia, and so on, and digs out some potential rules among these factors. Using this algorithm, neural network algorithm and genetic algorithm respectively, the statistical experiment of optimization modeling of college students’ mental health quality is carried out. Compare the statistical efficiency of the three algorithms, and the comparison results are shown in Figure 3.
It can be seen that the statistical efficiency of using this algorithm to optimize college students’ mental health quality is higher than the other two algorithms. In this experiment, we will compare the running efficiency of the algorithms. The experimental results of four common algorithms are shown in Table 1. To make the results more intuitive, draw the experimental results into line charts, as shown in Figure 4.
From the graph, we can see that the algorithm in this paper has certain advantages and effectiveness. It shows good scalability and relatively high running efficiency when processing batch transaction databases. According to the principle of “discretization of continuous data and classification of discrete data” in this chapter, the psychological symptom factors and personal basic information factors are concretized. The comparison chart of objective function generated by the algorithm is shown in Figure 5.
It can be seen from the figure that the iteration times of this algorithm are lower than those of the other two algorithms, which shows that this algorithm improves the running efficiency and further verifies that the clustering performance of this algorithm is better.
The whole data transaction set is divided into a plurality of transaction data sets and then a plurality of threads are moved back to initialize the matrix of each data set. After all the threads complete their tasks, all matrix blocks are combined into a matrix M, and then M is the Boolean matrix mapped by the whole data transaction set. Standardize the psychological test data of 6152 college students. Different algorithms are used to carry out statistical experiments on college students’ psychological barriers to behavior. Compare the statistical stability of college students’ psychological barriers to behavior with different algorithms, and the comparison results are shown in Figure 6.
From the graph analysis, it can be seen that the statistical stability of college students’ psychological hindrance to behavior by using this algorithm is better than the other two algorithms. In order to describe the influence of each factor on the clustering results in the clustering process, a pivot table is made to show the mean and standard deviation of each rational health factor. Table 2 is the variance analysis of each mental health factor.
According to the table analysis, the mean square of error within any factor class is less than that between classes, which shows that each factor has significant differences among classes. In addition, according to the value of F, it can be concluded that each essential health factor has different influence on clustering results. Among them, anxiety and interpersonal relationship factors have the greatest influence on clustering results. Hostility and somatization have little influence on clustering results.
Data mining algorithm is used in the data analysis of college students’ mental health, and it is confirmed that each factor has great differences among different categories, and then the influence degree of each factor on the clustering results is analyzed. The data sample set is divided into different continuations by iterative method, and the generated clusters are as compact and independent as possible by minimizing the objective function. Finally, the purpose of minimizing the sum of error squares between each sample and the mean value of the class is achieved. According to the classification of mental health status, different psychological problems are treated differently, and targeted psychological intervention or health education is carried out to provide basis for further prevention and intervention mechanism of psychological problems. Using this algorithm, neural network algorithm and genetic algorithm, the statistical experiment of optimization modeling of college students’ mental health quality is carried out. Compare the three algorithms to compare the statistical time complexity of the optimization modeling of college students’ mental health quality, and the comparison results are shown in Figure 7.
It can be seen from the figure that the statistical time complexity of using this algorithm to optimize the modeling of college students’ mental health quality is lower than that of the compared algorithm. This further verifies the effectiveness of this method.
The simulation results in this chapter show that compared with traditional methods, this method has great advantages in efficiency, stability, and time complexity. The performance of this algorithm is better. Through theoretical analysis of the obtained data, it is found that obsessive-compulsive disorder has a high correlation with depression, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity, paranoia, and other symptoms. Depression has a high correlation with symptoms, such as anxiety, sensitivity, terror, and psychosis. The most typical psychological problems of college students are depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and so on. The analysis of data results suggests that the mental health counseling center of school pays special attention to the prevention and guidance of freshmen in anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity in mental health screening.
6. Conclusion
Paying attention to college students’ psychological health and optimizing their psychological quality is an important task for colleges and universities in the new period. Based on the current mental health level of Chinese college students and the status quo of mental health education in colleges and universities, this paper points out the existing problems of mental health of college students. From the perspective of positive psychology, the problems existing in college students’ mental health are deeply analyzed, and VR technology is applied to the adjustment of college students’ mental health. This work is of great practical significance for understanding the psychological status and characteristics of contemporary college students, further guiding college students’ campus life and improving their mental health. By selecting some psychological related factors, this paper obtains some data from the psychological evaluation system of college entrance. Then, the collected data are mined to find some rules with practical significance hidden in these data, which can provide support for the research of college students’ mental health. I believe that with the continuous progress of science and technology and the development of information technology, the application of virtual technology in the treatment of college students’ psychological problems will be further improved and promoted, and more direct and effective results will be achieved.
Data Availability
The data used to support the findings of this study are included in the article.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Research on the construction of practice teaching system of primary education psychology course under the background of professional certification. Teaching and research project of Hanjiang Normal University (grant no: 2020c15).