The effect of a psychodynamic counseling intervention on university students’ time attitudes

Introduction: time attitudes refer to individuals’ evaluative feelings towards past, present, and future. Positive time attitudes were found to be meaningfully associated with individual adaptive functioning and healthy psychological outcomes in adolescents and young adults. Recent studies have shown that university counseling interventions are effective in reducing student’ symptoms and in promoting their health in a key development stage. However, the way in which these interventions can affect the time attitudes of students who turn to a university counselling service is still unknown. Aim: the present work aimed to investigate the effect of a psychodynamic counseling intervention in changing time attitudes (AATI) in a sample of university students. We hypothesized that students who engaged in counseling intervention would show a significative increase in positive time attitudes scores compared to the students in the control group. Methods: The sample included 252 students of Sapienza University of Rome, of whom 111 underwent university counseling and 141 constituted the control group. Students were asked to complete the Adolescent and Adult Time Inventory -Time Attitudes Scale (AATI-TA). The measure was administered at a pre-test (T0) and at a post-test (T1), which students in the experimental group completed at the end of the intervention, while those in the control group completed at the same time as the other group, but without undergoing any intervention. Results: the results of the repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed that students who had received counseling intervention reported a significant increase in Present Positive and Future Positive time and a significant decrease in Present Negative at the post-test compared to students in the control group. No significant differences between the two groups in Past Positive, Past Negative and Future Negative time attitudes were recorded. Discussion: our results support the hypothesis that a psychodynamic counseling intervention can have a positive impact on college students' feelings toward time, thereby promoting their mental health. These findings may have important implications for the development of interventions for university students focused on positive appraisal of their present and future in a pivotal moment of their development process.