Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1474544
This article is part of the Research Topic The influence of flourishing and its associated factors on the mental health and well-being of individuals View all 4 articles

The impact of positive activities on mental health: the mediating role of positive emotion

Provisionally accepted
Yanting Wang Yanting Wang Yuanyang Wu Yuanyang Wu Qianqian Xu Qianqian Xu Si Fan Si Fan Jinwen Hu Jinwen Hu Dongdong Zou Dongdong Zou Xinping Zhang Xinping Zhang *
  • School of Medicine and Health Management, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: Mental health has become a widely concerned topic worldwide. However, the impact and mechanism of positive activities on mental health still needed to be explored. This study aimed to apply the positive-activity model to investigate the effect of participation in positive activities on mental health and the mediating role of positive emotion.Methods: This study used data from the 2021 China Comprehensive Social Survey (CGSS) and included 2581 individuals. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and a three-step method was used for analysis.Results: The average of positive activities was 15.83. The positive activities affected positively mental health (β=0.0132，p<0.001). The positive emotion played a mediating role (β=0.2281， p<0.001). The effect of positive activities on mental health was significant in older adults group (β= 0.024, p<0.01), female (β= 0.015, p<0.01)and male group (β= 0.011, p<0.05), unmarried/divorced/widowed group (β= 0.024, p<0.01), cohabitation/first marriage with spouse/remarriage with spouse/separation without divorce group (β= 0.010, p<0.05), middle(β= 0.013, p<0.05) and upper-middle-level SES group (β= 0.054, p<0.01).Conclusions: We concluded that the participation level of positive activities still needs to be improved and positive activities improve mental health through positive emotion, which implied that positive activities, as an easily implementable measure, should be greatly encouraged in mental health policies. And older adults, female, people without spouse, middle and upper-middle-income individuals need to be paid more attention.

    Keywords: positive activities 1, mental health 2, positive emotion 3, positive-activity model 4, Mediating role5

    Received: 07 Aug 2024; Accepted: 12 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wang, Wu, Xu, Fan, Hu, Zou and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Xinping Zhang, School of Medicine and Health Management, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.