Advances in Social Science and Culture ISSN 2640-9682 (Print) ISSN 2640-9674 (Online) Vol. 6, No. 2, 2024 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc 111 Original Paper Exploration and Practice of the Selection, Training and Management of College Psychological Friends—Take the School of Transportation, Hunan University of Technology as an Example Xiao Zhou1 & Qiurong Qian1* 1 Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou, China * Qiurong Qian, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou, China Fund Project Project of Hunan University of Technology (2021A03) Received: January 11, 2024 Accepted: March 04, 2024 Online Published: March 23, 2024 doi:10.22158/assc.v6n2p111 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/assc.v6n2p111 Abstract College students crisis occurs frequently year by year, the reason, college students themselves, weak frustration ability, lack of mental health knowledge, weak crisis identification ability, weak self-help awareness, etc. In college level, mental health, insufficient number of psychological consultants, mental health committee, peer team selection system, inadequate training, inadequate management; the above is leading to college psychological crisis prediction. At present, our school in the basis of peer members, established the peer team, the combination of two teams greatly improved the coverage of mental health work in colleges and universities, for now the construction of the team to solve the psychological problems of college students universal results, this paper in Hunan university of technology institute of transportation, for example, analysis of peer members and peer team selection, training, optimization of management ideas. Keywords peer committee member peer team selection and training management assessment www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc Advances in Social Science and Culture Vol. 6 No. 2, 2024 112 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 1. The Significance of Peer Committee Members and Peer Counseling in Colleges and Universities Today, the mental health work in most colleges and universities is still in the primary stage of exploration, which leads to the lack of understanding of the psychological counseling room in the school, or the lack of awareness of the importance of psychological counseling, resulting in crisis events caused by psychological problems. As far as students are concerned, they are more willing to confide their confusion and questions to their peers who have a good relationship, rather than asking for help from Xinjian teachers, peer committee members, and peer teams. Therefore, the work of peer committee members and peer psychological counseling has the following significance. 1.1 It Enriches the Level of Mental Health Work Teams in Colleges and Universities The construction of peer committee members and peer teams in colleges and universities has greatly enriched the mental health work team in colleges and universities in terms of the number of personnel. to deliver. For example, there are 1,591 students enrolled in our college, 1 teacher in the school-level psychological counseling center, 1 college mental health specialist (concurrently serving as dormitory manager and trade union work), and 41 peer committee members (1 person per class). The psychological counseling center and the four-level mental health work system make the mental health education work chain more perfect. 1.2 Enhance Students’ Awareness of Self-Management and Self-Education As far as the mental health education work of the School of Communications is concerned, the peer committee members are born from students who are interested in psychological knowledge or have a strong sense of responsibility, and our college holds “Happy Military Training”, “Psychological Knowledge Competition”, “Excellent Peer Counselor Selection”, “525 Mental Health Month”, group counseling and other activities with different topics every academic year. In the process of carrying out the activity, these students are willing to explore the knowledge and skills related to mental health, so as to gain their own growth, and also help themselves to be self-aware and self-promoted, and their own psychological development has been improved. 1.3 The Accuracy and Effectiveness of Intervention in Psychological Crisis Events Have Been Strengthened Peer committee members and peer counselors come from among the students, and this team has a natural affinity, and the scope of work is wide and deep. In the case of psychological crisis in the School of Communications in the past three years, most of the ways to find the situation came from the problem reporting of peer committee members and peer counselors, and in the process of handling the incident, peer committee members and peer counselors also fully played a role in comforting and accompaniment. In the process of paying attention to some general cases, it is also the peer committee members and peer counselors who play a role, dynamically report the situation of the parties, and work with the heart and health professionals to keep the safety red line of the college more accurately and effectively. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc Advances in Social Science and Culture Vol. 6 No. 2, 2024 113 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 2. The Connotation of Peer Committee Members and Peer Psychological Counseling In the 60s of the 20th centuries, the United States took the lead in proposing peer counseling, which greatly promoted the growth and development of American college students. Later, universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong introduced this peer psychological counseling, and later mainland universities also gradually introduced it, and peer psychological counseling has developed to this day, which has undoubtedly become an indispensable force in the field of mental health education in colleges and universities. The so-called peer psychological counseling refers to the process of people giving psychological comfort, persuasion, support and encouragement to each other in the process of interpersonal communication. In 1986, the Psychological Advisory Committee of Colleges and Universities in China’s mainland was established, and in 2001, the Ministry of Education issued the “Opinions on Strengthening the Guidance of Mental Health Education for College Students in Ordinary Colleges and Universities”. Peer committee members are members of the class committee who are specifically responsible for mental health education related responsibilities in the school’s class design, and provide mental health help to classmates, dormitory classmates and friends around them. 3. Analysis of the Current Situation of the Selection, Training, and Management Assessment of Peer Members and Peer Teams 3.1 The Selection Mechanism Needs to be Standardized (1) The original intention of the establishment of the peer committee is to supplement the strength of mental health staff when the mental health work team is small, so as to grasp the mental health work into the class and do the work in a three-dimensional and meticulous manner. The work content of the peer committee involves strong professionalism, but the selection method is the same as that of other class committees in the class, the appointment of personnel is arbitrary, and there is a lack of consideration of issues such as psychological quality, sense of responsibility, and learning ability. As a result, the members of the mental health committee have a poor sense of identity and a weak sense of work, and some members of the mental health committee themselves have serious psychological problems. (2) The peer team is more inclined to public welfare in terms of the nature of work, and what this team should do more is to spread positive energy, drive a sunny and active atmosphere, and become a trustworthy object for the majority of students to seek help and confide in. However, as far as the current situation is concerned, the development of peer psychological counseling in colleges and universities, generally in the primary stage, there is often a situation of “wearing multiple positions” in the selection of personnel, in order to supplement the personnel and supplement, the selection process is not rigorous, non-standardized, and even “chasing ducks to the shelves”. The emergence of various selection problems has led to problems such as low enthusiasm and lack of professionalism in the peer team, and the effect of work development is not obvious. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc Advances in Social Science and Culture Vol. 6 No. 2, 2024 114 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 3.2 The Training Method Needs to Be Improved Urgently (1) After the selection of peer committee members in colleges and universities, there is a general lag in training. The main manifestations are: 1) The training content carried out at this stage is too monotonous, lacking the analysis of specific cases and the analysis and explanation of professional psychological counseling skills. Relying only on the imperfect “Peer Committee Work Specification”, the lack of corresponding professional ethics training and professional skills training, the professionalization of peer committee members, and the lack of corresponding professional skills in daily work, resulting in the inaccurate role positioning of peer committee members and the lack of sense of identity; (2) After the recruitment of the peer team, a series of professional assessments should be carried out, and only after passing can they take up the post, but there are problems in the training in the early stage of the assessment: (1) the professional training teachers of the peer counselors are insufficient, and the training of the peer team is generally organized by the colleges themselves, but the training force of the college itself has weak professional ability, and even the teachers engaged in the work of the college do not have the corresponding work qualifications; The systematization is insufficient, and there is no corresponding guide for the setting of peer team training courses, so there is a situation where each college is “full of flowers”, and the work level of the peer team after training is also very different, and it cannot be effective in carrying out its work. 3.3 The Management and Assessment System Needs to Be Improved Peer committee members and peer counselors are all from the student body, and the loopholes in management and assessment will lead to a series of problems such as the inability to identify crisis events in advance and the improper handling of unexpected problems due to negative attitudes and lack of responsibility. As far as management is concerned, it is often the heart health department that directly manages the heart health committee, because they are also students, there is no strong binding force on the management department; heart health professionals directly manage the peer team, due to the large workload of teachers and miscellaneous tasks, there will also be management omissions or lack of close contact. At present, the more common forms of assessment are mostly offline meeting sign-ins and online group speeches, which do not play a good role in team building and strength cohesion, and are not the management and assessment forms that students are willing to accept. 4. Suggestions for Optimizing the Ideas of Selection, Training, and Management Assessment of Peer Committee Members and Peer Teams The establishment of the peer committee and the peer team in China is the result of the localization of the Western model, which means that these two teams have important practical significance. According to the current situation of college students in China, it is the key to the continuous improvement of the mental health education system in colleges and universities to find and optimize the work ideas of the two teams in the selection, training, management and assessment. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc Advances in Social Science and Culture Vol. 6 No. 2, 2024 115 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 4.1 Distinguish Job Categories and Standardize the Selection Mechanism The purpose of the standardized peer committee selection mechanism is to select a group of students who are willing to engage in mental health-related work, so as to truly realize the purpose of peer committee members to carry out primary crisis prediction and popularize basic psychological knowledge in the class. Due to the particularity of the work function, the peer committee members should be distinguished from the general class committee members in the selection. Taking the School of Communications as an example, the selection of the mental health committee of our college is implemented: students voluntarily declare, reserve 2-3 places, and the competitors take turns to perform the work of the peer committee, each of them for two weeks (because the mental health weekly report system of our hospital stipulates that it is reported every two weeks), according to the situation of each person reporting the “weekly report”, observe the meticulousness, observation and sense of responsibility of the candidates, and finally confirm the candidates for the peer committee according to the candidates’ own psychological quality and work conditions after completing the mental health census. In short, the process of free declaration - rotation application - final competition - formal employment. At present, the advantages of this selection mechanism are: (1) strong sense of identity, (2) improvement of work effectiveness, (3) great potential for team quality improvement, and (4) high stability of team personnel. The selection of the peer team aims to build a team with a sunny heart and a psychological and professional level that is higher than that of ordinary students. In view of the special nature of the work of this team and the wider characteristics of the group than the peer members, the current selection mechanism of the School of Communications is to set up an additional interview speech link in combination with the selection process of the peer committee: (1) the setting of the speech link can more intuitively observe the mental outlook, demeanor, affinity and language expression ability of the candidates; (2) in the interview session, there will be corresponding scene performances, so as to judge the candidates’ crisis management awareness, psychological quality and other necessary professional qualities. 4.2 Clarify the Training Objectives and Enrich the Training Content According to China’s overall deployment of mental health education, the training goals of the student psychological work team can be divided into overall developmental goals, knowledge popularization and awareness education, safeguard goals, prevention of serious mental illness, and prevention of psychogenic extreme events. At the same time, under the guidance of the goal, the training of peer committee members should be hierarchical and graded, the primary goal is to popularize mental health knowledge, understand and recognize the importance of mental health, understand the relationship between mental health and personal growth and development, and maintain and promote the harmonious development of personal physical and mental health; the intermediate goal is to have a preliminary understanding of psychological counseling skills, effectively prevent mental illness and psychological crisis, and know how to ask for help and help others; and the senior goal is to master www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc Advances in Social Science and Culture Vol. 6 No. 2, 2024 116 Published by SCHOLINK INC. psychological counseling skills and apply them to time work. Under the combination of the three goals, it is necessary to gradually improve the professional ability of peer committee members in colleges and universities in China, and effectively promote the development of mental health education in colleges and universities. Enriching the training content is the top priority in the construction of the psychological work team. In view of the different training goals, the School of Communications currently sets the goal of this training work by grade: (1) popularize basic knowledge in the lower grades. (1) Firmly grasp the “Mental Health Education for College Students” in the freshman year (2) Carry out group counseling with different subjects twice per semester for peer committee groups, replace the traditional stereotyped regular meetings in the form of more joyful and relaxed group counseling, so that peer committee members can enhance team cohesion in group counseling, and also transplant the work form of group counseling, so that peer committee members can work in the class in a more relaxed and pleasant form。 (2) Senior peer committee members further strengthened crisis discrimination training. (1) The senior peer committee leads the junior peer committee, and the more typical practice of the School of Communications is that after the freshman enters the school, the senior peer committee member should follow the class and guide the work of the freshman class peer committee, especially the problem of freshman adjustment disorder that is common in the freshman class. Due to the high training goals of the peer team, more work is carried out in the form of case discussion and scenario simulation in the training process. In the case of the School of Transportation, (1) case discussion. Peer team case discussions will be held twice every semester to directly improve the team’s professional ability and crisis discrimination ability through vivid case discussions. The corresponding scenario theme is determined by the heart health specialist, and 1-2 scenario simulation performances are carried out in the semester, which is vivid and vivid, which is easier to be accepted by students, and the training effect is also very significant. 4.3 Establish the Purpose of Assessment and Build an Evaluation System Formulating an evaluation system that conforms to the youth outlook in the new era and giving full play to the requirements of the autonomy and all-round development of college students is the top priority of the improvement of the peer committee system in colleges and universities at this stage. Taking the School of Communications as an example, according to the particularity of the work object and the complexity of the work content, the assessment of the peer committee members should include professional knowledge reserves, professional skills, intervention effects, etc., and the comprehensive evaluation should be carried out in combination with the final results, and the corresponding moral education points should be given, so as to stimulate the work enthusiasm of the peer committee members with this moral education point system. The peer team comes from the student body, and the management and assessment system should be correspondingly flexible. Clarify responsibilities for the management of the peer team, improve professional ability, and reduce work loopholes. The assessment is carried out in the form of peer www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/assc Advances in Social Science and Culture Vol. 6 No. 2, 2024 117 Published by SCHOLINK INC. counselors’ interview record sheets, work plan completion, student satisfaction surveys, etc. Referring to the reward and punishment mechanism of peer members, a point system for moral education achievements is formed, so as to form a long-term driving force for work promotion. 5. Summary The construction of peer committee members and peer teams in colleges and universities is extremely necessary for the current situation of the prevalence of psychological problems among college students. However, judging from the current situation, the construction of peer committee members and peer teams in colleges and universities across the country is still imperfect, and there are also problems that need to be considered and optimized in the work ideas of team selection, training, management and assessment. 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