Views of School Counselors on Social Interest in School Mental Health Services

In this research study, it is aimed to determine the extent to which the concept of social interest is embraced in school mental health services. In order to gather the opinions of school counselors on social interest practices in school mental health services, a structured interview form consisting of four questions in addition to the demographic questions was prepared. Content analysis was used to examine the data. The obtained data were coded within the themes of definition of social interest, social interest practices, and suggestions, and the codes regarding the theme of social interest practices were found to be clustered under the psychological health, adaptation to society, the sense of belonging, coping, being beneficial to society, social presence, and life tasks categories. When the opinions obtained from school counselors were examined, it appeared that the psychological counselors have difficulty in defining the concept of social interest, that the ones who could define it properly in parallel with the literature and the ones who could not implement similar practices, that the activities they use are generally the ones which are mandatory as demanded by the Ministry of National Education, and that they focus on practices with a problem-oriented approach