Counselor value guidance and lower psychological crisis vulnerability: dual meaning-and-resilience pathways in cross-sectional and cluster-randomized evidence from Chinese universities

Description

Suye Sun, writing alone in 2026, examined whether university counselors' guidance of student values can lower psychological crisis risk. Chinese campuses face rising student distress, and most research maps risk rather than protection. The first surveyed 800 undergraduates on counselor guidance, sense of meaning, resilience, and crisis vulnerability. The second ran a six-week workshop in sixteen classes, with 319 students completing it, against ordinary mental health lectures.

In the survey, stronger guidance tied to lower vulnerability, through two channels of similar size: students built more meaning in life, and more resilience. In the workshop, the guided group improved more than the lecture group, with gains in meaning and resilience again carrying the change. Sun is frank about limits: the trial was logged internally but not publicly registered ahead of time, so its tests count as exploratory. Registered repeats with longer follow-up must confirm the pattern.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13437629