What Adolescents Seeking Help Teach us About a School-Based Counseling Service

Adolescents are reluctant to seek help, especially those at psychopathological risk. School may represent the ideal setting to intercept teens in trouble by reducing some barriers to help-seeking behavior; despite this, some obstacles remain difficult to overcome. The present study, involving a large sample (N = 2235) of secondary school students, aims to investigate the effectiveness of a counseling service as part of a multifaceted school-based prevention program. The counseling service is assessed by comparing students who asked for help with their peers in terms of their psychosocial characteristics, risk profiles and perceptions of the strategies that professionals adopt in order to reduce the barriers to individual counseling. Our findings reveal the capacity of individual counseling to serve the most vulnerable adolescents, with the exception of students who might be at risk of school drop-out. The effectiveness of the program implementation theory and the strength of particular strategies used to reduce barriers are discussed.