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This paper aims to examine the characteristics of students who withdrew from a university counselling service in northern Italy. Differences found in the socio-demographic characteristics of counselling completers and dropouts and in the scores obtained in questionnaires administered at the outset were analysed. Furthermore, in order to identify reasons for dropping out, a qualitative approach was also used. The results suggest that premature termination is not a unitary phenomenon and that dropouts are a heterogeneous group. It is important not to always consider dropouts as a negative outcome of university counselling services. Additional research on dropouts is needed to help university counselling services to serve students more effectively.

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.

Background: Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people and university students. Research has identified numerous socio-demographic, relational, and clinical factors as potential predictors of suicide risk, and machine learning techniques have emerged as promising ways to improve risk assessment. Objective: This cross-sectional observational study aimed at identifying predictors and college student profiles associated with suicide risk through a machine learning approach. Methods: A total of 3102 students were surveyed regarding potential suicide risk, socio-demographic characteristics, academic career, and physical/mental health and well-being. The classification tree technique and the multiple correspondence analysis were applied to define students' profiles in terms of suicide risk and to detect the main predictors of such a risk. Results: Among the participating students, 7% showed high potential suicide risk and 3.8% had a history of suicide attempts. Psychological distress and use of alcohol/substance were prominent predictors of suicide risk contributing to define the profile of high risk of suicide: students with significant psychological distress, and with medium/high-risk use of alcohol and psychoactive substances. Conversely, low psychological distress and low-risk use of alcohol and substances, together with religious practice, represented the profile of students with low risk of suicide. Conclusions: Machine learning techniques could hold promise for assessing suicide risk in college students, potentially leading to the development of more effective prevention programs. These programs should address both risk and protective factors and be tailored to students' needs and to the different categories of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dropout is a critical concern in higher education, with a considerable number of students leaving within the first two years of university. Dropout affects students' well-being and their academic and career prospects, and institutions' retention and graduation rates. The aim of this study was to explore the mediating role of motivation and cognitive strategies for learning in the relationship among self-efficacy, connectedness, and university dropout intention. A total of 790 Italian college freshmen were involved in this study. The sample was recruited through a web survey consisting of the Academic Motivation Scale, Perceived School Self-Efficacy Scale, University Connectedness Scale, and Self-Regulated Knowledge Scale-University. The freshmen's intentions to drop out were assessed with five questions. The average age of the freshmen was 20.9 years, most of them were female, and were attending a degree program in the medical area. The results show that self-efficacy is the most important predictor of dropout intentions, followed by university connectedness. Self-regulated knowledge has an important role in predicting dropout intention by acting as a mediator between self-efficacy and motivation.This study underlines the importance of investing in training and orientation interventions in order to develop the skills to face the university path, increasing self-efficacy, motivation, and consequently students' well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mental health issues are common among university students, but the latter are unlikely to seek professional help even when mental health services are available. Coping strategies, stigma and psychological distress are often considered as factors that can affect help-seeking intentions in university students. Methods: This study aimed to determine the role of coping strategies, stigma and psychological distress on the intentions to seek professional help for psychological problems. All students (N = 13,886) from an Italian medium-sized university were asked to participate in a multidimensional online survey and 3754 (27.1%) agreed to participate. A Structural Equation Modelling approach was applied to explore the simultaneous direct and indirect effects of distress, stigma and coping strategies on professional help-seeking intentions. Results: Results showed that students were not very likely to seek professional help and, through the Structural Equation Model, psychological distress was found to be positively correlated with coping strategies, which in turn was negatively associated with the stigma of seeking help. The latter was negatively associated with professional help-seeking intentions. These effects suggest that students with significant psychological distress use coping strategies to face the stigma of seeking help: the lower the stigma of seeking help, the higher the chance of developing intentions to seek professional help. Conclusions: This study suggests the importance of implementing programs to encourage college students to seek help, including measures that foster a stigma-free environment, reduce psychological distress and promote the use of adaptive coping strategies. Interventions should be focused firstly on self-stigma and secondly on perceived stigma, taking into consideration the level of psychological distress and social stereotypes associated with mental disorders and help seeking behaviours. Programs about coping are also essential and should focus on promoting emotion-focused strategies and problem-focused strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to evaluate the coping strategies used by college students and their association with socio‐demographic characteristics and distress. The sample was composed of 219 students, who had previously accessed the university counselling service over a 5‐year period. The Symptom Checklist‐90‐Revised, the General Health Questionnaire‐12 and the Brief COPE Inventory were administered. Results showed that male students tended to use more active strategies than female students and that students studying health‐related subjects presented less distress than those studying technical subjects. Moreover, the results indicated that the self‐blame coping strategy is a major predictor of mental health issues and that interaction between age and area of study aggravated the symptomatology. Further research is needed to better understand the experience of distress from the college students' perspective, and to identify what interventions are really effective in supporting students to cope with distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. College students live a crucial period of transition from late adolescence to adulthood when they have to deal with important stressful tasks. Thus, university often represents a stressful environment, pushing students to cope with a high academic pressure. As a result, this period constitutes a sensitive age for the onset of mental disorders. Typically, students are not aware of the early signs of their own compromised mental health until symptoms aggravate to an overt disorder. Therefore, it is important to timely detect subthreshold symptoms mostly related to generic mental distress. Objective. First, to assess psychophysical well-being and mental distress among college students in northern Italy, and to detect predictors, among socio-demographic and academic characteristics, and risky drug use of these two outcomes. Method. The study involved 13,886 students who received an email explaining the purpose of the e-research. The questionnaires used were the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), the University Stress Scale (USS), and a modified version of World Health Organization-ASSIST v3.0. Results. 3,754 students completed the web-survey. Students showed poor well-being and mental distress. The strongest predictor of mental distress and compromised well-being was physical health, followed by sex, study field, risky drug use, and academic performance concerns. Discussion and conclusion. This study shows that it is very important to promote in college students healthy behaviors in order to increase their physical exercise and reduce substance use. Moreover, it would be desirable to improve academic counselling facilities as an important front-line service to intercept mental health issues among young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]