Effects of Emotionally Focused Counselling and Lifestyle Skills Training on Senior Secondary School Students

Abstract

Emotional problems of secondary school students constitute a major challenge not only to the student and school authorities but also to counsellors, parents and the school community. It is worrisome that children experiencing emotional problems such as interpersonal insensitivity, aggression and hostility often fail to achieve academically at levels expected of individual with their intellectual ability and are usually unable to establish the necessary interpersonal relationships necessary for their effective social functioning. This study therefore examined the effects of emotionally focused counselling and lifestyle skills training on the emotional problems of senior secondary school students in Anambra State, Nigeria. The emotional problems investigated were hostility, social maladjustment and interpersonal insensitivity of the participants. Quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group design was adopted for the study. The final sample size was made up of 129 participants consisting of 77 male and 52 female students in senior secondary one (SS1) class who reported experiencing at least one or more problems of hostility, social maladjustment and interpersonal insensitivity. The relevant data were generated using the Liking People Scale (LPS), Social Maladjustment Scale (SMS) and Automatic Thought Questionnaire (ATQ). Findings show that Emotionally Focused Counselling (EFC) and Lifestyle Skills Training (LST) had significant effect in reducing hostility and social maladjustment as well as improving the interpersonal sensitivity of the senior secondary school students. It also revealed that EFC and LST was effective in enhancing the emotional growth of the students. However, the interaction effect of experimental conditions and gender on all the dependent measures (hostility, social maladjustment and interpersonal insensitivity) were not statistically significant. It was recommended that in order to reduce the problems leading to the experience of hostility, social maladjustment and interpersonal insensitivity, the sources of the problem should first be isolated to allow the counsellors design appropriate psycho-educational programmes utilizing emotionally focused counselling and lifestyle skills training to ameliorate the problems and mitigate their symptoms and consequences.