Clinical trial NCT06333444: Counselling Intervention for College Students Experienced Psychological Distress
Official title: The Role of Mentalization, Emotional Regulation and Loneliness in College Students' Psychological Distress
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Phase: NA
Conditions: University Students
Psychological Intervention
Psychological Distress
Keywords: university students
university counselling service
mental health
academic motivation
Lead sponsor: University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2024-03-27
Enrollment: 100
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 30
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: NA
Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Intervention model description: Four weekly psychological counselling intervention
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: 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

Detailed 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 criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* being university students who asked psychological help to university counselling service and completed the intervention

Exclusion Criteria:

* do not speak Italian

Primary outcomes:
measure: psychological distress
timeFrame: before and after the treatment, up to 7 weeks
measure: Academic motivation
timeFrame: before and after the psychological intervention, up to 7 weeks
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Emotion regulation ability
timeFrame: before and after the treatment, up to 7 weeks
measure: perceived loneliness
timeFrame: before and after the intervention, up to 7 weeks
measure: drop-out intention
timeFrame: before and after the intervention, up to 7 weeks
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Caserta
country: Italy
facility: University of Campania
Study officials:
References:
citation: Beiter R, Nash R, McCrady M, Rhoades D, Linscomb M, Clarahan M, Sammut S. The prevalence and correlates of depression, anxiety, and stress in a sample of college students. J Affect Disord. 2015 Mar 1;173:90-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2014.10.054. Epub 2014 Nov 8.
citation: Batra K, Sharma M, Batra R, Singh TP, Schvaneveldt N. Assessing the Psychological Impact of COVID-19 among College Students: An Evidence of 15 Countries. Healthcare (Basel). 2021 Feb 17;9(2):222. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9020222.
citation: Auerbach RP, Alonso J, Axinn WG, Cuijpers P, Ebert DD, Green JG, Hwang I, Kessler RC, Liu H, Mortier P, Nock MK, Pinder-Amaker S, Sampson NA, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Al-Hamzawi A, Andrade LH, Benjet C, Caldas-de-Almeida JM, Demyttenaere K, Florescu S, de Girolamo G, Gureje O, Haro JM, Karam EG, Kiejna A, Kovess-Masfety V, Lee S, McGrath JJ, O'Neill S, Pennell BE, Scott K, Ten Have M, Torres Y, Zaslavsky AM, Zarkov Z, Bruffaerts R. Mental disorders among college students in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys. Psychol Med. 2016 Oct;46(14):2955-2970. doi: 10.1017/S0033291716001665. Epub 2016 Aug 3.