MENTALIZING UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE THROUGH GROUP COUNSELLING

Many interventions have been developed to promote mentalizing with high functioning individuals who rely on rigid mentalization when facing developmental tasks (Midgley & Vrouva, 2014). e Narrative Mediation Path (NMP; Freda et al., 2016) group counselling was developed to sustain underachieving university students’ mentalizing through narration to foster psychological well-being, academic engagement, and performance. is contribution discusses the mentalizing roots of the NMP, its effectiveness, integrity to the MBT-G (Karterud, 2015), and the relationships between clinician’s mentalizing interventions and members’ change. The effectiveness of 9 face-to-face (N=56) and 13 online (N=66) NMPs was evaluated with a set of questionnaires, including the RFQ. Treatment integrity and members’ change were analyzed in some of the face-to-face NMPs, respectively with the MBT-G AQS (Karterud, 2015), and the IMCS-G (Esposito et al., 2021). Outcome results showed an improvement of students’ mentalizing; process results showed an adequate integrity and the facilitating role of specific clinician’s mentalizing interventions (e.g., mentalizing external events in the group) in promoting members’ change. Strengths and rooms of improvement of the NMP in fostering mentalizing will be discussed.