Korean Journal of Psychology: General
- P-ISSN : 1229-067X
- E-ISSN : 2734-1127
- Publisher : The Korean Psychological Association
- CCL :
3papers in this issue.
The mental health of students is deteriorating at an alarming rate, presenting substantial challenges within educational settings. Given the well-documented relationship between student mental health and long-term adult mental health outcomes, it is crucial that these issues not be overlooked. Schools, as the primary settings where students spend most of their time, and teachers, as trusted resources, provide a meaningful and effective context for interventions. Over the past 3-4 years, the authors of this paper have collaborated with educational administrative bodies to provide group training and various consulting methods, enabling schools, teachers, and parents to competently address prevalent issues, such as student attention deficits and impulsive behavior. Furthermore, to enhance schools’ capacity to manage the rising incidence of suicide attempts and self-harm, and to strengthen the capabilities of school counselors while ensuring a safe educational environment, a “Visiting Expert Task Force” was deployed to schools experiencing crises, delivering therapeutic interventions on-site. This program dispatches professionals to schools experiencing crises, providing multidimensional therapeutic interventions and ongoing case management to improve school response capabilities, enhance the skills of school counselors, and ensure a safe educational environment. This paper describes these initiatives and considers how psychologists can establish collaborative and integrative school-based support models, with the ultimate goal of equipping more psychologists to collaborate in school settings based on their trained expertise and knowledge.
In order to understand social-emotional challenges during adolescence and provide proper prevention and interventions, an in-depth understanding of adolescent development is needed. This paper summarizes social and emotional development during adolescence, and connects the adolescents’ developmental characteristics and their vulnerability to social-emotional problems. In addition, specific emotional and problem behaviors are discussed in the context of the developmental characteristics. Suggestions and considerations for healthy social-emotional development and prevention/interventions are discussed.
The “Wee Project,” initiated as a national policy, is inseparable from school counseling in South Korea. Activities that support students’ psychological and emotional development are becoming increasingly important in the context of school education. In this paper, we review the current status and issues of 20 years of school counseling based on literature such as laws, policy reports, statistics, and academic materials related to the Wee project. By analyzing the status and issues over the past two decades, this study seeks to provide insights for building a school counseling system that fosters students’ healthy growth. First, there is an urgent need to establish a dedicated administrative management system for school counseling. Second, mentioned the need for public discussion regarding a standardized model for school counseling and proposed the ‘School-wide Dual-track Model’ as an alternative. Third, a review of strategies for implementing collaboration and cooperation within school counseling is required. Fourth, measures must be devised to establish the identity of school counselors and address burnout. Fifth, it is essential to accumulate field-based research on the planning and operation of school counseling programs. Through this discussion, it is hoped that school counseling in Korea can evolve from a policy-driven project into a Korean-style school counseling system focused on universal prevention and developmental approaches.