108. The effect of mental health nursing on the psychological reconstruction of poor families IN the process of rural economic poverty alleviation

Abstract Background With the ongoing implementation of Rural Economic Poverty Alleviation (REPA), mental health issues among impoverished families have become increasingly prominent. Traditional poverty alleviation measures have primarily focused on improving economic indicators, while paying relatively insufficient attention to psychological resilience, restoration of family functions, and emotional regulation capabilities. This has resulted in some families remaining in prolonged psychological vulnerability even after escaping economic poverty. Mental Health Nursing (MHN) holds potential value in promoting emotional recovery, behavioral adjustment, and social function reconstruction, yet its mechanisms and clinical efficacy in REPA contexts still lack systematic evidence. Based on this, the study aims to further evaluate the effect of mental health care on the psychological reconstruction of poor families by comparing the changes of key psychological indicators of different families before and after intervention and during follow-up, and analyzing the effect of mental health care and its related predictive factors. Methods The study enrolled 428 impoverished families from six rural regions, with 286 families assigned to the MHN intervention group and 142 to the conventional poverty alleviation service control group. The 12-week MHN intervention program included emotional management training, stress identification guidance, family communication facilitation, community support connections, and individual psychological counseling. Key assessment indicators comprised emotional regulation capacity, family function levels, social cohesion, and psychological distress severity. Evaluations were conducted at baseline, intervention completion, and 6-month follow-up. Results After the 12-week intervention, the mental health care group demonstrated a significant trend of superiority over the control group across all indicators. Emotional regulation scores improved by approximately 35 percentage points from baseline, whereas the control group showed only a 12-point increase, with a statistically significant difference between groups (p=.004). Regarding family functioning scores, the intervention group’s average score rose from 2.41 pre-intervention to 3.87, while the control group increased only from 2.39 to 2.96, with a significant between-group difference (p=.009). Assessments of social cohesion revealed that the nursing group experienced an approximately 31% increase in positive social interactions post-intervention, compared to less than a 10% increase in the control group (p=.007). Psychological distress indicators showed a downward trend, with the nursing group’s overall distress index decreasing by 42% across items including anxiety, persistent tension, and helplessness, compared to an 18% reduction in the control group (p<.001). Discussion The findings indicate that mental health care significantly promotes psychological reconstruction among impoverished families in rural economic poverty alleviation contexts, yielding stable improvements in emotional regulation capacity, family functioning, and overall psychological distress. By integrating emotion management training, family support promotion, and community resource linkage, mental health care offers a more human-centered pathway for targeted poverty alleviation. It helps identify priority households most likely to benefit from psychological interventions, providing an empirical foundation for establishing future rural poverty alleviation systems that synergize economic and psychological dimensions. Future research should validate these effects through longer follow-up periods and broader geographic coverage, while exploring replicable mental health service models to support sustainable rural revitalization. Funding No. 2022AH040343; No. AZCJ2023006; No. 2024AH040294.