Overview
The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate mental health and academic motivation in university students asking help to university counselling service (UCS) in Southern Italy before anf after four weekly psychological sessions.
The main question it aims to answer are:
- is the psychological counselling intervention useful in improving psychological distress and academic motivation
- which psychological variables predict the intervention outcome
Description
The participants will be university students who completed psychological counselling intervention delivered by UCS (University of Campania, Italy). They will be asked to completed an internet-based survey, administered anonymously through Google Forms. The survey consist of two sections. The first section includes questions about sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., gender and age), enrollment year, type of university course attended, academic standing (i.e., whether all exams within the prescribed period had been passed), and previous or current contact with psychological or psychiatric mental health services (university or non-university). The second section comprises four scales that assessed the variables of interest.
To measure psychological distress and problems, the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) will be used. Feelings of loneliness will be assessed using the University of California-Los Angeles Loneliness Scale version 3 (UCLA-LS3). Emotion regulation will be assessed using the Difficulty in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Students intentions to continue or to drop out of the academic course will be measured with self-reported questions.
Eligibility
Inclusion Criteria:
- being university students who asked psychological help to university counselling service and completed the intervention
Exclusion Criteria:
- do not speak Italian