A follow-up study on students attending a university counselling service in Northern Italy

ABSTRACT

The aims of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of a university counselling service in Northern Italy, to assess the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of students who used counselling service, and to assess the psychological conditions of the students who ended the counselling after a 4 month follow-up period. The study involved 100 students, who filled out the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), the Brief COPE Inventory, and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). The results showed that who received counselling were positively affected by this experience. The areas of benefit were psychological well-being, coping behaviours, ability to positively reframe problems and less sense of guilt. Additional studies are needed to identify which factors influence the outcomes of university counselling services in Italy. These studies would be important to evaluate the services rendered, upgrade the skills of counsellors and visualise priority areas of need.

KEYWORDS:

• University
• counselling
• students
• follow-up
• effectiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alberto Ghilardi is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Medical Faculty of Brescia University, Italy. His leading research interests are medical training, communication, psychotherapy.

Chiara Buizza is a psychologist, psychotherapist and PhD at the University of Brescia, Italy. Her primary research interests include mental health, and psychotherapy.

Andrea Costa is a psychologist and counsellor at the University of Brescia, Italy. His leading research interest is university counselling.

Claudio Teodori is Full Professor of Economy and Management at the University of Brescia, Italy. His leading research interest is the business economy.

ORCID

Chiara Buizza http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3339-3539

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Eulo Fondation.