Using six colleges and universities in City A as the research sample, this paper constructs an index system for examining the coupling effect between Civic and Political Education and Mental Health Education, so as to quantify their coordinated development. Grey correlation analysis is employed to reveal the degree of association between the two and to confirm the existence of a synergistic relationship. The fsQCA method is further introduced to identify the key paths through which Civic and Political Education can be integrated into mental health teaching and to uncover the driving mechanism of the curriculum-based Civic and Political model. The findings indicate that the average value of the coupling degree between Civic and Political Education and Mental Health Education in colleges and universities at all levels is 0.5293, showing that the overall coordination remains at a barely coordinated stage. “Practicing socialist core values” is identified as a necessary condition for policy-oriented value leadership. A configuration characterized by background embeddedness as the core condition, combined with teacher-led philosophy and theoretical teaching as marginal conditions, while student-led philosophy is absent as a core condition, can generate a high level of effectiveness in the civic-political model of mental health education programs.
