PhD Scientific Days 2023

Mental Health Sciences - Posters M

Effectiveness of counselling and pastoral counselling, with special attention to the spiritual dimensions of the counsellor and the counselee

Text of the abstract

Introduction:
An increasing number of institutions and NGOs in Hungary provide mental health counselling, but few national and international research has been conducted on the impact of this intervention on individuals who have access to supportive sessions.

Aims:
The aim of this poster is to provide a comprehensive overview of the exploratory work that our research team launched in spring 2021 on the effectiveness study of counselling and pastoral counselling services, and which has been ongoing since then. We will describe where, with whom and with what tools we measure and how we try to delineate the changes that occur in the psychological well-being of the people seeking help through these services. We will also focus on the significance and impact of the dimensions of theistic spirituality in the persons concerned.

Methods:
This research is an online survey using questionnaire interfaces built on Limesurvey and Google Sheets. Two measurement tools are used and validated: the Outcome Questionnaire 45.2 (OQ 45.2) and the Theistic Spiritual Outcome Survey (TSOS). In our outcome assessment, we compare the well-being and functioning of clients before the start of the intervention with the state at the end of the process. The research design will be complemented by a survey of helpers after the end of the helping relationship.

Results:
Our research allows comparisons of pre- and post-counselling status overall, but also broken down into specific domains: general well-being, relational functioning, functioning at work, and for the subgroup receiving pastoral counselling, spiritual well-being. Statistical analyses will be used to determine the significance of differences. However, our research does not allow us to infer causality, as we are not working in a control group design.

Conclusion:
We expect that our research will provide valuable data also for comparing non-psychotherapeutic counselling interventions across different populations, in our case: university students and adults.

Funding: The research was not supported by fundings.