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Mental Health and Ideological-Political Education among Higher Vocational College Students during the Internship Period: A Literature Review

Author(s)

Liuliu Sheng*

Affiliation(s)

Student Affairs Office, Taizhou Vocational and Technical College, Taizhou, Zhejiang, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

With the deepening of industry-education integration, internship has become a pivotal nexus in higher vocational students' transition from “campus person” to “professional person”, and the psychological adaptation and ideological guidance involved therein have attracted growing scholarly attention. Drawing on a sample of 96 relevant articles indexed in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) between 2012 and 2026, this paper employs literature analysis and thematic coding to systematically review four dimensions: the types and manifestations of psychological problems during internship, their influencing factors, intervention and counseling strategies, and the practical dilemmas of ideological and political education (IPE) during internship together with school-enterprise collaborative education pathways. The findings indicate that environmental adaptation gaps, job-search pressure and psychological contract breach constitute three major inducements of internship psychological problems. Psychological resilience is a key protective factor alleviating career-choice anxiety, whereas employment pressure impairs students' overall mental health through the mediating roles of sleep quality and general well-being. IPE during internship, constrained by spatial dispersion, diversified management subjects and students' dual identity, falls into an “isolated island” dilemma characterized by “insufficient coverage, generalized content and weak collaboration”, with marked stage-specific differences between mid-program internship and in-post internship. Existing studies generally advocate taking the “dual-tutor” and “triple-tutor” systems as the lever, supported by school-enterprise cultural integration and the whole-process “three-all education” system, so as to achieve the organic unity of psychological counseling and ideological guidance. Future research should strengthen longitudinal tracking designs, deepen micro-operational studies of collaborative mechanisms, and explore digitally empowered paradigms of precision intervention.

Keywords

Higher Vocational College Students; Internship Period; Psychological Problems; Ideological and Political Education; School-Enterprise Collaboration

References

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