Keeping emotions in mind: the effectiveness of university counseling in promoting students' mentalized affectivity

Introduction: Mentalized affectivity, intended as individuals’ ability to identify, process, and express emotions by reading them through the lens of autobiographical memory, is a pivotal aspect of change in psychological interventions. Several studies pointed out the effectiveness of university counseling in improving students’ well-being but most of them focused only on the assessment of symptomatic measures. Since university students’ difficulties are often embedded in feelings of uncertainty and confusion proper of the developmental stage of “emerging adulthood”, evaluating changes in their ability to mentalize emotions could enrich our knowledge of the effectiveness of this form of intervention. The present study aims to investigate the usefulness of a university counseling intervention in improving psychological well-being, decreasing depressive symptoms, and enhancing mentalized affectivity. 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 following questionnaires: Clinical Outcome in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure; Beck Depression Inventory-II; Brief-Mentalized Affectivity Scale. Each questionnaire 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 any intervention. Results: The results of repeated-measures ANOVAs showed a significant improvement in global wellbeing and depression in the students who had received counseling and not in those in the control group. Similarly, students in the experimental group showed a significant increase in their ability to identify, process and express their emotions, whereas those in the control group did not. Discussion: Our results shed light on the usefulness of university counseling not only in reducing intake symptoms but also in improving a process of mentalizing one's own emotions. A greater emphasis on how university counseling exerts its efficacy beyond symptom reduction could be particularly important in tailoring interventions to the specific problems of university students.