The Effect of Happiness Training on Students’ Mental Health and Level of Happiness Based on Fordyce Cognitive-Behavioral Technique

Introduction: The purpose of the present study is the influence happiness training on students’ mental health and level of happiness. Methods: A pre-test post-test method with control group is applied in the present work. At first, the GHQ-28 questioner is given to 500 students. Afterwards, 70 students have been chosen randomly among those that have had low mental health. They have been divided into two groups of the experimental and control groups (each group has had 30 participants due to sample attrition). Then, the Oxford Happiness questionnaire is given to both groups and they were pre-tested. An 8 session course of happiness training based on Fordyce cognitive-behavioral technique (the duration of each session was about 120 minutes) is presented to the experimental group and the participants of the control group have continued their normal lives. After presenting the training sessions, both groups have taken the post-test. Moreover, for checking the sustainability effect of the training program, both groups have been followed up after three months. The obtained results have been analyzed using analysis of variance with repeated measure. Results: The results have shown that happiness training based on Fordyce cognitive-behavioral technique has increased the students’ mental health and level of happiness (p≤0.05). The same results have been obtained in the follow up stage. However, happiness training does not have any significant difference in the increase of mental health and level of happiness between male and female students. Therefore, the influence of happiness training as an independent variable on the dependent variables has not been significant considering gender factor. Conclusions: Happiness training has been effective on the students’ mental health and level of happiness.