Research on the integration model of children’s mental health education and innovative thinking from the perspective of positive psychology

Background At present, children’s mental health empowerment and innovative thinking cultivation are insufficient, and an integrated education system has not yet been formed. Based on the theoretical framework of positive psychology, this study constructs an integrated model of children’s mental health education and innovative thinking cultivation. Methods A retrospective control design was adopted in this study. The data of children’s follow-up education were collected, and 320 valid samples were screened. According to different psychological intervention methods, they were divided into observation group and control group with 160 cases in each group. The control group adopted the conventional mental health education mode, while the observation group implemented the positive psychology-oriented integrated cultivation mode of mental health and innovative thinking. With Psychological Wellbeing (PWB), Connor-Davidson Children’s Psychological Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) as the core indicators. Observable confounding bias is controlled by propensity score matching (PSM), path correlation between variables is tested by maximum likelihood estimation of structural equation model (SEM), and the single-intermediary effect is tested by deviation correction. The combined reliability (CR) and the average variance extraction were used. Results After the intervention, the scores of psychological wellbeing, psychological resilience and innovative thinking in the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group. After propensity score matching (PSM) matching, the baseline equilibrium between the two groups was comparable, and the model CR > 0.82 and average variance extraction (AVE)>0.51, with good aggregation validity; The structural equation model shows that the total effect of integration mode on children’s innovative thinking is 0.610, and positive psychological quality plays a partial mediating role, and the mediating effect accounts for 43.78% of the total effect. The test–retest reliability of the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of each dimension is 0.924, and the data reliability is excellent. Conclusion The integrated mode of positive psychological guidance is related to the improvement of children’s positive psychological literacy and innovative thinking level, which suggests the intermediary transmission mechanism of multi-dimensional positive psychological factors and provides practical reference for the integrated cultivation of children’s psychological education and innovative literacy.