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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV0534

Beyond symptom reduction: university students’ qualitative perceptions of meaningful change in psychotherapy for depression

BEYOND SYMPTOM REDUCTION: COLLEGE STUDENTS’ QUALITATIVE PERCEPTIONS OF MEANINGFUL CHANGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR DEPRESSION

University students define meaningful therapeutic change beyond symptom reduction; reduced stress, improved coping skills, and the presence of positive affect are mentioned at least as frequently as reductions in psychological symptoms.

The aim is to examine how university students define meaningful change following mental health treatment, focusing particularly on changes they consider important beyond symptom reduction. The method is an exploratory cross-sectional online survey of 150 students recruited from a diverse campus population through campus-wide emails, flyers, and classes taught by the researchers; participants completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales–21 (DASS-21) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale–18 (DERS-18). The primary data consisted of responses to the open-ended question, “Imagine you have completed a mental health treatment; what changes would lead you to say that you had experienced meaningful change?” These responses were independently coded thematically by two coders, and inter-rater reliability was calculated using Cohen’s kappa (κ = 0.986). Of the sample, 110 (73.3%) were women, 117 (78.0%) were White, 34 (22.7%) were Asian, and 29 (19.3%) were multiracial or multiethnic; 111 (74.0%) reported current or past mental health treatment (psychotherapy alone: 46, 40.4%; medication alone: 3, 2.6%; psychotherapy and medication: 65, 57.0%). Reported reasons for seeking psychotherapy were anxiety in 83 (76.1%), depression in 62 (56.9%), stress in 62 (56.9%), and trauma in 27 (24.8%). Scale scores were a median DASS-21 depression score of 8.0 [IQR 4.0–14.0], a median DASS-21 anxiety score of 8.0 [4.0–14.0], a median DASS-21 stress score of 14.0 [8.0–20.0], and a mean DERS-18 score of 43.2 ± 12.2. Among the 135 students who answered the open-ended question, the most frequently reported categories of meaningful change were reduced stress and improved coping skills (51.85%; n=70), the presence of positive affect (51.11%; n=69), reduced psychological symptoms (50.37%; n=68), improved relationships and social connectedness (43.70%; n=59), improved quality of life (37.78%; n=51), increased self-confidence (33.33%; n=45), emotion regulation (25.93%; n=35), feeling like oneself again (20.00%; n=27), improved sleep (19.26%; n=26), and other (3.70%; n=5); percentages do not total 100 because students could report multiple changes. The authors emphasize that reduced stress, coping skills, and positive affect were mentioned at rates comparable to or higher than reductions in psychological symptoms; they suggest that evaluating treatment outcomes may require measures that better reflect students’ perspectives and that further research should examine how these domains vary across institutional settings.

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