Özet:

The study investigated the mental health counseling seeking behavior and psychological adjustment among undergraduate students in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive research design of the survey type. The population of the study consisted of all undergraduate students in universities in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The sample for this study consisted of 500 undergraduate students from two universities in Ekiti State selected using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Data was collected with the use of a self-designed questionnaire tagged Mental Health Counselling and Psychological Adjustment Questionnaire (MHCPAQ). The instrument was validated through thorough screening by experts of Tests and Measurement with background knowledge in Counselling. The reliability of the instrument was determined by finding the internal consistency of the instrument using Cronbach alpha which yielded reliability co-efficient values of 0.91 for section B and 0.84 for Section C. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data collected from respondents. The findings of this study showed that the level of mental health counseling seeking behavior among undergraduate students was low while psychological adjustment was moderate. It was also revealed that mental health counseling seeking behavior of undergraduate students was related to their psychological adjustment. In addition, mental health counseling seeking behavior among undergraduate students does not differ based on their gender but male undergraduate students have higher psychological adjustment than female undergraduate students. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that university counselors should sensitize undergraduate students on the need to inculcate mental health counseling seeking behavior.

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