Psychological help-seeking among pedagogical university students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33910/2686-9527-2021-3-2-208-217Keywords:
psychological assistance, psychological help-seeking attitudes, request for psychological assistance, healthy functioning, university student, university counselling and psychological serviceAbstract
There is an international consensus regarding the need to develop psychological services in education institutions, including tertiary education. This study evaluates pedagogical university students’ readiness to apply for professional psychological counselling and describes the reasons to seek psychological help among this population. The sample included 1,343 students of Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (Saint Petersburg).
Students have relatively little experience of getting professional psychological assistance: 32.5% have received it once, while 13.7% have received it within the last year. The majority of students (75.4%), however, would consider visiting a psychologist in the future. The study demonstrated pronounced gender differences in student attitudes to psychological help-seeking. Though both male and female students had similar rates of previous use of psychological services, male students show a less positive attitude towards using them in the future.
When seeking psychological assistance, respondents had the following requests: normalisation of the mental/emotional state — 54.8%; normalisation of interpersonal relations — 16.6%; assistance in self-development — 11.6%; assistance in self-exploration — 10.6%; information — 10.0%; transformation — 8.0%.
Despite the general positive attitude towards seeking psychological help, not all students are a priori positive about the idea of seeking help particularly from the university service. Future research should be focused on the source of such a discrepancy.
Research such as ours facilitates planning university psychological assistance programs’ capacity and design, as informed by the potential clients’ needs and preferences.
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