Enhancing Hope, Resilience, Emotional and Interpersonal Skills in Counsellor Trainees: A Controlled Trial

Abstract

This study was aimed to develop the group psychological counselling programme for counsellor trainees to develop their ability to recognise, express emotions and establish healthy intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. Moreover, the effect of the group practices was also investigated. The experimental design included the pre- and post-test control group. The sample of this study forms third-grade students attending the Guidance and Psychological Counselling in Marmara University, Turkey. 24 students were randomly assigned to the groups. Integrative Hope Scale, The Need for Affect Scale, Resilience Scale for Adults, Emotional Expression Questionnaire, and Scale of Interpersonal Relationships Dimensions were used as instruments. The results indicate that the developed group counselling programme yielded differences between the experimental and control groups, and the pre- and post-test scores of the training group. The findings indicate that the group counselling programme contributed to improving the hope and psychological resilience by relying on healthy relationships. Keywords: Counselling, hope, resilience, emotion expression, interpersonal relationship.