College Student Help Seeking: the Impact of Residence Hall Counseling and Educational Programming on College Student Willingness to Seek Help

The reluctance of individuals in general and college students in particular to seek professional help for personal concerns has been well documented in the literature on help-seeking. Many authors have indicated that changes should be made in the services provided to students to try to increase willingness to seek professional help for personal concerns. Few attempts have been made, however, to implement changes. Based on available information, students at the university in this study may have lower than average willingness to seek professional help for personal concerns. This study implemented counseling and educational programming into two residence hall complexes to try to increase the willingness of students to seek help. A quasi-experimental, Solomon four-group design was used, with willingness to seek professional help for personal concerns as the dependent variable and implementation of counseling and educational programming into the residence halls as the independent variable. It was hoped that the program would make seeking help seem less threatening to students.