The Effectiveness of Existential Group Counseling on Distress Tolerance and Subjective Vitality of Students

Providing mental health counseling and interventions for students is crucial to preventing or addressing psychological challenges in this vulnerable group and can play a significant role in supporting the university’s educational objectives. The present study aimed to determine the effectiveness of existential group counseling on distress tolerance and mental vitality in students. The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of this research included all male and female undergraduate students at Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University who were referred to the University Counseling Center to receive counseling services in the academic year 2023-2024. Among the interested students, 30 students were selected by available sampling 15 were randomly assigned to the experimental group, and 15 to the control group. The data collection tools in this research were Subjective Vitality Questionnaire (Ryan & Frederick, 1997) and Distress Tolerance Questionnaire (Simons & Gaher, 2005). The existential group counseling protocol was implemented in 10 sessions of 90 minutes, one session per week for the experimental group. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. The research findings showed that the post-test mean of subjective vitality and distress tolerance in the experimental and control groups had a significant difference at 0.01. As a result, existential group counseling can be used as an effective intervention to promote subjective vitality and tolerance of students’ distress.