Abstract:

This study was conducted to test whether the psychological counseling process, including the religious dimension, is effective in eliminating the psychopathological levels of university students. The research was conducted with fifteen students studying at undergraduate level at different departments of Mardin Artuklu University. Seven of these students were applied individual psychological counseling; and eight individuals were applied psychological counseling including religious dimension. The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) was used to select subjects and to measure the effectiveness of the application. The BSI was administered to counselors immediately before the psychological counseling intervention, immediately after the intervention period was over, and 6 months after the last test was administered. The data collected to test the psychological counseling intervention on the psychopathological levels of the clients were analyzed using the SPSS 21.0 package program and the Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon Marked Ranks tests were used. As a result of the research, it was determined that the individual psychological counseling application which included the religious dimension had a permanent effect on the decrease of the psychopathology levels of the university students, and that it was more effective than the individual psychological counseling without lowering the general psychopathology level with somatization, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, depression and anxiety sub-dimensions.

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