COVID-19: Are School Counseling Services Ready? Students' Psychological Symptoms, School Counselors' Views, and Solutions

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on high school students' psychological symptoms and to understand how ready counselors and school counseling services are based on the data we have. Therefore, this research is designed under two different studies: (A) Study 1: Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on students' psychological symptoms and (B) Study 2: Views and expectations of students and school counselors about school counseling services. The first study was a quantitative study and included 549 high school students (398 female, 151 male). A structural equation model (SEM) was created to examine the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on participants' psychological symptoms. The Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) scores showed that 107 (19.50%) individuals had a score of 50 and above pointing out that individuals in this group had severe impact of event/trauma symptomologies. The SEM analysis indicated that IES-R scores had a total effect of 0.79 on anxiety, 0.75 on depression, 0.74 on negative self-concept, 0.68 on somatization, and 0.66 on hostility scores. Furthermore, female students had significantly higher scores on anxiety, depression, negative self-concept, somatization, hostility, and impact of events variables than male students. Study 2 was a qualitative design and consisted of five school counselors and five students from different schools. The results indicated that students' difficulties during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak were educational, cognitive, emotional, physiological, relational, technological, and related to routines. Academic, social, emotional, and behavioral issues came to the fore among the difficulties that can be experienced if students start face-to-face education. On the other hand, the school counselors listed that family relations, personal–social, emotional, and academic themes were the difficulties experienced by the students at the beginning of the COVID-19. In addition, when COVID-19 started, the services offered by school counselors were discussed under (1) services for the student, (2) services for the family, and (3) services for the teacher. Finally, according to the opinions of the school counselors, if students start face-to-face education, they may experience emotional, academic, and relational difficulties. In summary, it is vital that student personality services be prepared and implemented by school counseling services for schools based on the results.

The Impact of Demographics, Life and Work Circumstances on College and University Instructors’ Well-Being During Quaranteaching

“…The impact of gender on anxiety (albeit with only a very small effect size) mirrors the findings by Alemany-Arrebola et al (2020) among college students, where women had higher scores in trait and state anxiety; the latter accentuated in cases where a relative had died -thus showing that the stressful situation of the pandemic and remote learning together with a critical event such as the illness and death of a relative or friend due to COVID-19 increases anxiety levels (and-in the case of the original studyinfluences the perception of academic self-efficacy). A similar conclusion was reported in Turkey by Aslan et al (2020), where female (as well as less physically active) students displayed higher levels of perceived stress and by Karaman et al (2021), in Switzerland by Amendola et al (2021), and in the US (Business Wire, 2021;Clabaugh et al, 2021), while among teachers a similar trend was observed in the Basque Country (Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al, 2021). In the general population, three studies carried out in Italy (Mazza et al, 2020;Moccia et al, 2020) and Iran (Moghanibashi-Mansourieh, 2020) showed women's mental health to be more impacted than men's; on the other hand, research in China (Cao et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2020;Huang and Zhao, 2021) and a meta-analysis by Cénat et al (2021a) of papers again mainly hailing from this country found no gender differences in females' and males' experience of pandemic-related stressors.…”

Relationship between social support, coping strategy against COVID-19, and anxiety among home-quarantined Chinese university students: A path analysis modeling approach

“…Given the variety of the students’ demographic background, school counselors should avail themselves of the optimal interventions to empower students. At this point, technique such as dialectical behavior therapy (DDT) which involves more mindfulness self-regulation or emotion regulation may be more suitable for adolescents (Karaman et al, 2021 ).…”

Escalation of Suicide Amidst The COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia: Progressive Strategies for Prevention

“…Evidence revealed that students reportedly experienced more psychological distress during this pandemic period 14 , therefore the role of school Guidance and Counselling teachers is vital to provide detailed information on the risk factors, warning signs, coping skills, debunk the myths of suicide, and promote better help-seeking behaviours in both students and parents. iii.…”