TITLE:
The Effectiveness of Clinical Colloquium Established by the “Drawing Recall” Technique in University Counselling Services for Student Mental Health
AUTHORS:
Valeria Biasi, Paolo Bonaiuto, Nazarena Patrizi, James M. Levin
KEYWORDS:
Assessment, Clinical Colloquium, Counselling Service, Drawing Recall Technique, Personality Test
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.7 No.5,
May
8,
2015
ABSTRACT: An experimental assessment of the effectiveness of university counselling was conducted through the “Stress Drawing Recall” Technique applied before and after a clinical colloquium with 70 university students of both genders, aged 18 - 35 years, who had requested this service. Another 70 students waiting to undergo the colloquium were interviewed as a control group. Two parallel series of drawings depicting personal stress situations were collected and, after evaluation by three expert judges in “double-blind” conditions, led to establishing five forms of development of the graphic language from the first to second drawing, defined as follows: a) distension, with a reduction in stress indicators and increase in comfort indicators; b) explicit representation of conflict resolution; c) appearance of new elements, with persisting conflict; d) increase in stress indicators; e) invariant or equivalent repetition of the stress drawing. Results showed that students who underwent the clinical colloquium (experimental group) changed their stress drawings mainly in the direction of distension and conflict resolution, while the control group had more invariant or equivalent repetition of the stress situation (= 62.77; p