The predictive role of some personality and symptomatological variables on the outcome of a university counseling intervention

Introduction: Scientific literature has widely pointed out that university students are often exposed to different and heterogeneous forms of psychological distress. A wide variety of symptomatology was found within this population, with an alarming prevalence of anxiety, depression, interpersonal difficulties, substance abuse and suicidal ideation. University counseling centers are nowadays a largely spread reality that provides a response to the growing demand for help from young people. Many studies have shown the effectiveness of university counseling interventions in reducing different kinds of psychological dis-tress. Considerable improvements in anxiety and depressive symptomatology, perceptions of self-efficacy, and sense of belonging have been found, for instance, in students that had undertaken sup-port at the university counseling center for those specific difficulties. Despite these evidences, there are still many unexplored areas within the research field of university counseling interventions. Examining the role played by certain personality traits and by some symptomatological dimensions in predicting the outcome of a counseling intervention represents, for instance, an innovative perspective in this topic. This study aims to examine the role of some personality traits, measured by Personality Inventory for DSM–5-Brief Form (PID-5-BF; Krueger et al., 2013) and of some symptomatological dimensions, measured by Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1996), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck & Steer, 1993) and Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS; Beck et al., 1974) in predicting the outcome of a university counseling intervention, measured by Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45; Lambert et al., 2004). Methods: The study was conducted within the counseling center of “La Sapienza” University of Rome. The sample consisted of 122 university students between 19 and 48 years old (M=23,4; SD=4,3) who spontaneously underwent counseling. All participants signed an informed consent before the beginning of treatment. They were asked, then, to complete the following questionnaires before the intervention: PID-5-BF, BDI-II, BAI, BHS and OQ-45. The same measures were taken immediately after the end of it, except for PID-5-BF. The counseling intervention included four interviews with a psychologist from the center. Several sets of multiple regressions were applied to examine which variables, measured at the outset, had a role in predicting the outcome of counseling. Specifically, in the first step of the multiple regression, the 5 personality traits of the PID-5-BF were taken as independent variables, to these were subsequently added the variables depression (BDI-II) and hopelessness (BHS). The different domains of OQ-45: Symptom Distress (SD), Interpersonal Relations (IR), Social Role (SR) and its Total Score were considered as dependent variables. The criterion for significance was set at p=0.05 for all analyses. Statistical Analysis were performed using IBM SPSS 27. Results: Regarding the SD dimension, multiple regression analysis showed that when the 5 personality traits were considered separately, the Detachment dimension of PID-5-BF at pretest partially predicted the outcome at posttest (p<0.05). However, when BDI-II, BAI and BHS variables were added, the only significant variable turned out to be Hopelessness (BHS) (p<0.05). Regarding the IR dimension, analysis showed that, even in this case, when the 5 personality traits were taken separately, the Detachment dimension at pretest signifi-cantly predicted the outcome at posttest (p<0.05). When BDI-II, BAI and BHS variables were added, Detachment continued to be significant in predicting outcome, but Hopelessness (BHS) was also significant (p<0.05). Regarding the SR dimension, when taken individually, the 5 personality traits were not significant in predicting the outcome. When BDI-II, BAI and BHS were added, the Somatic-Affective dimension of BDI-II and BHS were significant in predicting outcome (p<0.05). Finally, regarding the Total Score, analysis showed that, when the 5 personality traits were considered separately, the Detachment dimension significantly predicted outcome (p<0.05). When the other variables were added, Detachment lost its significance, and the Somatic-Affective dimension of BDI-II and Hopelessness (BHS) became significant (p<0.05). This latter result allows us to make assumptions about the effectiveness of university counseling. If we consider the Total Score of OQ-45 - a very useful measure for progress in psychotherapy - it results interesting to note that initial hopelessness and higher levels of somatic-affective depression revealed greater predictive capacities than personality traits. This could be linked to the limited time frame in which this intervention takes place: the loss of motivation, the negative feelings and the negative expectations about future - the three main aspects of hopelessness as measured by BHS – appear to be more relevant than personality traits in determining a positive outcome in a treatment that requires only four interviews. The same reasoning can also lead the interpretation of the role of the somatic-affective component of depression in affecting outcome. This intervention could, in fact, exerts its effectiveness to a greater extent on aspects of depression such as concentration difficulties, fatigue, loss of energy and loss of pleasure, compared with cognitive aspects such as guilty feeling, self-criticalness and sense of worthlessness. This could be related to the specificity of this type of setting but could also be credited to a different motivation that drives the work of those students who have greater feelings of somatic-affective depression and hopelessness. Conclusions: This study shed light on some dimensions that are involved in the effectiveness of university counseling. The fact that students’ initial depressive and hopelessness dimension was shown to be preeminent in predicting outcome represents an interesting finding. Research on process, however, has yet to investigate the mechanisms underlying these findings as well as the major variables that are accountable for therapeutic change within university counseling. Considering multiple points of observation, using, for in-stance, clinician-report measures in addition to self-report measures, could enrich our knowledge of this topic.