School Counselor’s Perspectives on Secondary Students’ Mental Health

Abstract

Mental health status of Malaysian youth Mental health in Malaysia is a major public health issue with the high prevalence of anxiety, depression and stress symptoms among school students. Early identification and intervention for students in need, and early support for educators is integral to a sense of responsibility within the school counseling profession. A qualitative phenomenological design was used, which engaged the participation of 15 school counselors in secondary schools of Kuala Lumpur to describe lived experience following students with mental issues. The research used semi-structured interviews in order to understand ‘types’ of difficulties and causes for these, along with the support provided within school. Through this type of research, counselors' perspectives can be thoroughly investigated drawing out the fine-grained aspects of the difficulties they face daily. Through the consideration of such underlying, and as other researchers might argue contributing elements, namely lessons learned from the experiences of front liners in the field, the paper seeks to bridge theoretical propositional knowledge to practical realities within Malaysian educational setting. The phenomenological approach reflects young people¢s authentic voices of experience with youth mental health. The findings would also contribute towards the contemporary profile of mental health status among the Malaysian secondary school students which can help identify areas that can be improved. Such findings would provide valuable benchmarks for guiding intervention development that produces greater or more durable effects, as well as training counselors and advising policymakers to increase support of mental health among adolescents in educational settings. Ultimately, it aims to bolster mental health structure in schools so that young Malaysians can receive prompt and effective psychological help.