For the fault diagnosis needs of the full life cycle (light degradation, moderate degradation, and severe degradation) of rolling bearing under the environment of high background noise, a genetic algorithm-output input hidden feedback (GA-OIHF ) Elman neural network model is proposed to achieve precise diagnosis of the degradation faults of rolling bearing. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is selected to effectively reduce the noise and extract fault features of the vibration signal. An OIHF Elman neural network is designed by increasing the feedbacks from the output layer to the hidden layer and the input layer based on the Elman neural network, thus further improves its ability to process full life cycle data of rolling bearing. Then, a novel GA-OIHF Elman neural network model is developed by combining the genetic algorithm (GA) and the OIHF Elman neural network. The novel GA-OIHF Elman neural network model combines the global optimization of GA and the local optimization ability of the OIHF Elman neural network to achieve an accurate fault diagnosis of the entire life cycle of rolling bearing. The experimental results show that the GA-OIHF Elman algorithm model can not only accurately diagnose the fault in the full life cycle of rolling bearing, but also ensure the stability of the diagnosis model for different faults including different fault components and stages.