143. Alleviating effect of positive psychology intervention on social work stress of educators

Abstract Background The social work pressure on educators has become a prominent issue in the global education sector. Long-term exposure to high social work pressure can lead to a significant decline in the mental health of educators, which in turn affects teaching quality and student development. Positive psychology intervention, as a technical means focusing on individual strengths and enhancing psychological capital, has shown good application prospects in the field of workplace stress relief. However, there is a lack of specialized research on the social work stress of educators. Therefore, the study aims to examine the effect of positive psychological intervention on alleviating the social work stress of educators through randomized controlled trials and long-term follow-up. Methods The research adopted a randomized controlled trial design. A total of 210 educators from 12 primary and secondary schools in a certain province were selected as the research subjects and randomly and equally divided into the Intervention Group (IG) and the Control Group (CG). Among them, the intervention group received an 8-week comprehensive positive psychology intervention. The key intervention contents included strength identification and application training, gratitude expression and positive emotion cultivation, cognitive reconstruction and stress coping skills training, as well as professional meaning and goal setting. The control group received no intervention and only carried out routine teaching work. The research adopted the Social Work Stress Scale (SWSS) and the Psychological Capital Questionnaire. PCQ and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) were used as measurement tools, and data were collected respectively after the intervention (T1) and 3 months after the intervention (T2). Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 26.0 statistical software, and the intervention effect was verified through methods such as independent sample t-test and repeated measures analysis of variance. Results The research results are shown in Table 1. As can be seen from Table 1, in the T1 stage, the total SWSS score (42.38) and the total MBI score (36.50) of the intervention group were significantly lower than those of the control group (SWSS = 60.14, MBI = 58.29), while the total PCQ score (89.47) was significantly higher than that of the control group (50.36). And the differences between groups of each index were statistically significant (p<.001). In the T2 stage, the above indicators of the intervention group were still significantly better than those of the control group, indicating that the intervention effect was sustainable (p<.001). It indicates that the effect of positive psychology intervention on alleviating the social work pressure of educators is sustainable. Discussion Research shows that positive psychology intervention has a significant effect on alleviating social work stress for educators and has good sustainability, with the effect lasting for more than three months. This provides more comprehensive theoretical and practical support for promoting the construction of a mental health service system for educators.