British Journal of Guidance & Counselling

The study investigates the effectiveness of an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) intervention to enhance the positive mental health of women undergraduates by focusing on the development of character strengths, flourishing, mindfulness, and the reduction of psychological distress. Using a quasi-experimental design, the study involved 162 undergraduate women (mean age 18.55) from rural backgrounds; 80 volunteered for intervention and 82 for the control group. Participants completed pre-, post-, and three-month follow-up assessments, and the results showed significant gains in mindfulness, PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) flourishing, character strengths, and a reduction in psychological distress, with moderate to large effect sizes. A follow-up after three months showed persistent effects in certain aspects. This investigation among the Indian population contributes to the literature on MBSP in an Eastern context. It underscores the effectiveness of MBSP as a positive psychological, mindfulness-based intervention on college campuses for promoting well-being and mitigating mental health challenges among college students.

This article aims to explore perceptions of learning outcomes, central professional competence, and the profession among students graduating from the higher education programme in career guidance and counselling in Sweden. The empirical data consists of semistructured interviews with 22 students graduating in career guidance and counselling. The students consider individual career guidance counselling to constitute the heartland of the professional practice and emphasise practical competence, or know-how, learned in courses in conversation methodology and workplace learning. They find that the substance, or know-what, of career guidance counselling, such as knowledge of education systems and the labour market, needs to be learned in professional practice as it is specific to the organisation and workplace. They argue that their profession has a low status in society and that career guidance counsellors are expected to display professionalism and establish a basis for trust and legitimacy in the workplace.

Alcohol consumption and Internet use are highly prevalent behaviours among young adults and previous research has suggested that different addictive behaviours might be distinctly associated with personality. This study examined the role of big-5 personality traits in alcohol consumption and Internet use. Alcohol consumption, internet use, and personality traits were assessed on 457 Portuguese university students. Higher levels of neuroticism, and lower levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness were found to be associated both with harmful alcohol use and problematic internet use. Openness to experience was not correlated with either behaviour. Multiple linear regression showed that conscientiousness might be an important predictor of both alcohol consumption and Internet use. There is an important overlap in personality traits related to alcohol and the use of internet, but there are also clear differences in what regards extraversion. Conscientiousness should be promoted as a preventive strategy.

This study examined whether positive and negative experiences mediatethe association of intolerance of uncertainty with psychologicaladjustment problems as well as loneliness. A total of 366undergraduate students (50.3% females; mean age = 21.24 ± 2.96 years)completed an online survey that included measures of intolerance ofuncertainty, positive experiences, negative experiences, psychologicaladjustment problems, and loneliness. The findings indicated that therelationship between intolerance of uncertainty and psychologicaladjustment problems was mediated by positive and negativeexperiences. Similarly, the association between intolerance ofuncertainty and loneliness was also mediated by positive and negativeexperiences. These findings suggest that emotional experiences areimportant in mitigating the negative effects of intolerance ofuncertainty on mental health outcomes. Theoretical contributions andpractical implications of the results are also discussed

dolescence is characterised by intense experimentation. This study examined the prevalence and pattern of psychoactive substance use and common life events among adolescents abusing psychoactive substances in a Nigerian Hospital. The study employed cross-sectional descriptive method of 385 patients admitted for drug rehabilitation in the ABUAD Multisystem Hospital Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State Nigeria. Smoking and eating Marijuana (47.6%), eating Datura stramonium leaf (32.2%) and drinking alcohol (11.4%) were psychoactive substances commonly used among the respondents. The predominant life events among respondents included: heavy load of study (34.3%), study pressure from family (26.5%), family member serious illness (23.5%), scolding by parents (21.1%), and tired of learning (20.8%). Datura stramonium leaf abuse is an emerging psychoactive substance among the respondents.

This article presents a case report on the use of Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) in treating a patient with features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) over an extended treatment duration. The case report highlights the effectiveness of CAT in addressing complex and entrenched issues and emphasises the use of the Sequential Diagrammatic Reformulation (SDR) and Multiple Self State model as key therapeutic tools. The findings demonstrate the benefits of longer treatment duration in CAT for individuals with features of BPD and underscore the importance of tailoring treatment to individual needs.

When organisations make employees redundant, they increasingly offer outplacement counselling to them, either in-house or as a service of specialised companies. Despite outplacement counsellors' importance, their work-related stress has not been studied yet. In this paper we argue that internal (in-house) outplacement counsellors have a particularly demanding job (especially because being employed by firing organisations should increase role conflicts among internal outplacement counsellors) and they should thus be more emotionally exhausted than external outplacement counsellors. Data from 98 German outplacement counsellors supported this argumentation. Mediation analyses showed that these differences were mediated by increased role conflicts, consistent with role theory arguments. The same effect was found for counsellors' job satisfaction. These results help understanding the stress that outplacement counsellors experience.