Graduate Program

Clinical Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2007

Thesis Director

Anu Sharma

Thesis Committee Member

Unknown

Thesis Committee Member

Unknown

Abstract

The current study examined whether gender and/or academic specialization had any relationship to students presenting issues, symptom severity, and treatment outcome at a university counseling center. The participants were 484 clients and the data were collected at an East Coast university counseling center. Clients were included for the analyses if they were a new intake, clearly fit into one of six categories for academic major, and attended more than one session. Each client filled out both the Personal Information Form (PIF) and Behavioral Health Questionnaire (BHQ) at intake, and was administered the BHQ prior to each subsequent session. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that female students would present with more interpersonal/relationship problems, would present with greater symptom severity, and would have a better treatment outcome than male students. Humanities majors were hypothesized to present with more interpersonal/relationship problems, with more symptom severity, and to have a better treatment outcome than the science majors. Finally, it was hypothesized that an interaction effect of gender and major would result in treatment outcome benefiting females in the humanities the most, followed by males in the humanities, females in the sciences, and males in the sciences. Results indicated that male students reported more career problems while female students reported more difficulty with several other areas of presenting issues. Furthermore, male students majoring in the humanities presented with more symptom severity than male students majoring in the social/behavioral sciences. Lastly, the humanities majors indicated greater improvement than social/ behavioral science majors, natural science majors, and undeclared students. Possible reasons for these findings as well as clinical and research implications are discussed.

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