Are Rural Residents' Mental Health Influenced by the New Countryside Construction? An Investigation in Chongqing, China

To improve the living environment in rural areas, the Chinese government has mapped out an important strategy, "New Countryside Construction" (NCC). The purpose of this study is to reveal the effect of NCC implementation on the rural residents' mental health, and the relationship between them. In this study, from Apr. 5 to Aug. 12, 2015, rural residents from 10 villages in Chongqing, a metropolis in southwest China, were chosen for questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaire was designed to cover two sets of questions: one concerned with the mental health scale (Kessler 6) and the other on the construction conditions in the rural areas. Afterward, the statistical software SPSS was employed to analyze the collected data. Based on the data analysis, two results were generalized. First, NCC significantly improved the mental health of the rural residents. Second, factors closely related to the NCC, such as infrastructure, housing satisfaction, and time spent from the newly built countryside to the city significantly influenced the mental status of the rural residents, whereas the influence of the road conditions was not significant. The NCC plays a positive role in improving the mental health of the rural residents. Thus, the Chinese government should exert greater efforts to encourage and promote NCC to safeguard social fairness and justice to improve rural residents' mental health.