Promoting well-being, reflective functioning and academic engagement through university group counselling: a naturalistic study on outcome and process

Introduction: In the last few years, the number of students seeking for help at university counselling services highly increased and university counselling groups proved to be very effective in promoting psychological well-being through the role of group therapeutic factors, such as group cohesion, and low levels of group conflict and avoidance. Methods: The present study aims to evaluate, through both process and outcome measures, the efficacy of 4 counselling groups (N= 25; F= 12; M= 13) provided by the SInAPSi Centre of University of Naples Federico II during the academic year 2022/23 and addressed to underachieving university students. Specifically, students participated in the nine weekly sessions Narrative Mediation Path counselling group aimed at improving mentalization, psychological well-being and academic engagement in order to have an impact on the students’ academic performance. The following questionnaires were administered in the pre-test, post-test and follow up to evaluate the outcomes: RFQ for the evaluation of reflective functioning, USEI for measuring academic engagement, PGWB-I for analyzing psychological well-being, and the API for measuring the students’ academic performance. Therapeutic process was evaluated in terms of group climate with the GCQ and group session impact with the GSRS at the end of every session. Descriptive and inferential analyses were performed for evaluating outcomes and process. Results: Preliminary results showed that three of the four groups significantly improved in terms of psychological well-being, but the only group that improved in the other outcomes, despite the emergence of conflictual dimensions in some sessions, also presented a more positive process, both in terms of group climate and of an overall positive impact of each session. Discussion: This study confirmed the strictly association between good outcomes, positive group climate and session impact but it also highlighted that outcome does not depend only on a high level of cohesion between group members but even on the presence of conflictual dimensions when the latter can be elaborated during the therapeutic process.