Deepening the construction of an independent knowledge system for mental health education in China requires focusing on three key concepts: “integration, innovation, and empowerment”. Integration serves as the foundation, guided by policy and institutional frameworks, strengthening top-level design, breaking down knowledge barriers across education, health, and social sectors, and promoting the integration and development of mental health knowledge and applications to ensure coverage of all populations and scenarios. Innovation is the core, rooted in cultural self-consciousness, subjectivity, and originality, moving away from reliance on Western theories, focusing on the generative logic of theories and terminology, and extracting new theories and constructing local terminology from Chinese culture and practice to ensure reflection of Chinese cultural genes and practical characteristics. Empowerment is the goal, achieved through innovating empirical research paradigms and constructing practice paradigms that integrate knowledge and action, realizing the implementation and feedback of knowledge, and ensuring the transition from theory to practice and from practice back to theory. It can be said that “integration, innovation, and empowerment” essentially represent the deepening process of constructing an independent knowledge system for mental health education in China.
