Academic performance-related stress levels and reflective awareness: the role of the elicitation approach in an Italian University’s psychological counselling

We describe a university ’ s psychological counselling approach, based mainly on a form of dialogue known as an “ Elicitation Interview ” . It is a technical conversational situation in which a counsellor helps a student to raise his or her awareness of his/her educational experiences. It is a conversational approach that provides students with a reflective activity by means of guided reenactments of experiences of his or her relational difficulties, feelings of low self-efficacy, risky behaviours, physical and mental symptoms. This reflective activity seems to be a relevant step for helping them to consolidate coping and resilience skills. This paper present clinical examples of this type of interview. The data have been collected at the University of Salerno ’ s counselling service, Italy.