We describe a university's psychological counselling approach, based mainly on a form of dialogue known as an "Elicitation Interview". It is a technical conversational situation in which a counsellor helps a student to raise his or her awareness of his/her educational experiences. It is a conversational approach that provides students…

Recent years have seen increasing awareness of the wide range of mental health problems faced by students. Gatekeeper training has been shown to have a positive impact on knowledge and attitudes about suicide prevention, although the evidence for skills acquisition is limited. We utilised the STORM® training package in an exploratory study to…

School-based studies identify that while 1 in 10 young people engages in self-harm, only a small minority seek professional help. School counsellors and teachers are potentially the only professionals who may be aware of a young person's self-harm; however, little is known about how this impacts on them and how they might be best supported to…

This study explores how adolescent clients construct the purpose and outcome of counselling. A narrative analysis was performed on interviews with 22 clients (aged 16--18) who had used a school-based counselling service. The aim was to identify the purpose and outcomes that participants attributed to their counselling experience. The analysis…

This small-scale study, based in a semi-rural South Wales Local Authority, sought to explore how both school-based counsellors and link-teachers perceive their school-based counselling services. The research aimed to answer three research questions: 1) what are the perceived impacts of the service? 2) what are the perceived attributes of the…

The aim of this article is to explore self-healing processes in young people, and to develop an understanding of the effects of school-based counselling (SBC), by analysing changes in young people who did not receive this intervention. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 young people on a waiting list for SBC. Participants…

Counselling culturally diverse populations poses several challenges for mental health professionals in schools as well as the wider community. In 1998, the author interviewed counsellors working in Israeli schools, and categorised their approaches to immigrant pupils in four broad categories: culturally encapsulated assimilator, self-facilitator,…

This study explores factors affecting the involvement of regular secondary school teachers in the whole-school approach to guidance and counselling by interviewing 12 secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. Emerging themes include teachers' ownership of their role in student guidance and counselling, the alignment of their disposition with…

This study of student suicide within UK higher education directs attention to the community context of suicide. A modified psychological autopsy approach was used to explore 20 case studies of student suicide from the period 2000-2005, drawing on the perspectives of family members, friends and university staff. The study identifies features of the…