Counseling Students’ Mental Health Status and Attitudes toward Counseling

Abstract

Existing studies have often expressed concern that impaired counseling students are destined to become impaired counseling professionals and as such are apt to do great harm if the issue of admitting and graduating impaired students is not addressed. This study examined mental health and attitudes toward counseling among counseling graduate students at a Southern university. Participants completed the Personal Orientation Inventory, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Attitude toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale. In analyses of outlier/extreme scores, 5.8% to 22.1% of participants’ scores on various scales were within a range outside of “normal” so as to be considered as possibly being impaired or having negative attitudes towards counseling. Limitations of the study are noted and recommendations regarding counselor preparation are offered.