A Sustainable Approach to Mental Health Education: An Empirical Study Using Zhuangzi’s Self-Adaptation

Abstract

No one can avoid feeling frustrated, and contemporary schools should take the lead in supporting mental health. A sustainable approach to such education can be found in Zhuangzi (ca 369–ca 286 BCE), a representative of Taoist schools who is credited with writing the Zhuangzi, a philosophical and literary text. The first section of this study uses qualitative research methods to identify 70 concepts regarding self-adaptation in the Zhuangzi and classifies them into 11 categories. The individual sentences from which these concepts originated are then logically reordered by category to create texts that aid a reader’s understanding of Zhuangzi’s philosophy. The second section of this study uses purposive sampling through an online questionnaire to consider university student feedback on self-adaptation philosophy. Overall, 84.12% of students agreed or strongly agreed that self-adaptation could help them deal with frustration, and 40.80% of students identified the category “mental state” as the most helpful. Furthermore, 88.91% of students reported that thinking about their mental state was most helpful in interpersonal relationship situations. Thus, self-adaptation offers individuals a sustainable, healthy means of dealing with life’s challenges. The findings of this study may have far-reaching impacts on European and American society by cultivating the general public’s interest in Zhuangzi’s philosophy.