With the increase in social pressure, the anxiety symptoms of college students with mental disorders are increasing year by year. This has harmed their living standards and learning outcomes. The current intervention measures largely overlook the impact of ideological and political education in universities.

The study used a randomized controlled trial design. The experimental group (n=60) adopted innovative ideological and political education interventions, including group discussions, role-playing, and theme reports, with an intervention period of 12 months. The control group (n=60) received routine psychological counseling services. All participants were evaluated at the beginning, duration of 6 months, and end of the study. The Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A) was mainly used for evaluation. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was conducted on the data using SPSS 22.0.

After the intervention, compared with the control group, the anxiety symptoms of the experimental group of college students were significantly reduced. After 12 months of intervention, the HAM-A score of the experimental group decreased by an average of 12.1 points, while the average decrease in the HAM-A score of the control group was 3.2 points. The follow-up evaluation also confirmed this result.

This study shows that innovative ideological and political education interventions are significantly superior to conventional psychological counseling services, and effectively reduce anxiety symptoms of college students with mental disorders in clinical practice.

The 2020 Hubei Skilled Talent Training and Research Center Project (No. 20BJN014); 2020 China University Industry, University and Research Innovation Fund - New Generation Information Technology Innovation Project (No. 2020ITA02052).