From Emotional Awareness to Supportive Action: A Conceptual Framework for Experiential Mental Health Instructional Units in Chinese Higher Education

University students in Chinese higher education face academic, interpersonal, and developmental pressures that require more than counseling access or general mental health awareness. Existing university responses often improve knowledge or service availability, yet they do not always clarify how adaptive psychosocial resources can be deliberately cultivated or mobilized through ordinary curriculum participation. This conceptual paper develops a mechanism-informed framework for experiential mental health instructional units in Chinese higher education. The paper uses conceptual synthesis to integrate experiential learning theory, constructivist learning theory, cognitive behavioral theory, and resilience theory, and then translates these foundations into a sequenced instructional model. The proposed framework positions experiential instructional units as the educational input, reflective meaning-making and cognitive reappraisal as core learning mechanisms, and emotion regulation, cognitive flexibility, and social support as linked adaptive resources. The resulting model contains ten instructional units that move from emotional awareness and regulation to cognitive flexibility, support engagement, and integrated psychosocial application. Its main contribution is to shift university mental health education from awareness transmission and service-dependent support toward a curriculum-embedded pathway for psychosocial resource development. The framework is designed to be culturally responsive to Chinese higher education, where stigma, face concerns, help-seeking hesitation, and relational expectations may influence how students express distress and use support. It also offers curriculum designers a clearer structure for aligning learning activities, reflective tasks, and intended psychosocial outcomes. Experiential mental health education may offer a low-stigma and developmentally structured approach to student adaptation. Because the framework has not yet been tested in real educational settings, it should be treated as an operationally specified model for future pilot, longitudinal, and quasi-experimental evaluation rather than as evidence of demonstrated effectiveness

Experiential Mental Health Education; Emotion Regulation; Cognitive Flexibility; Social Support; Chinese Higher Education

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