Psychological well-being of students and directions of psychological support of education

Abstract

Introduction. The specifics of the work of university psychological educational support services are related to helping young and adult people involved in educational relationships with problems arising in connection with psychological distress or with the tasks of ensuring psychological well-being.Purpose setting. The purpose of the study is to analyze current problems of preserving and strengthening the psychological well-being of modern university students in the context of various areas of psychological support of the educational process.Methodology and methods of the study. The research method is theoretical analysis of current problems of ensuring the psychological well-being of students through psychological support of education. The methodological basis of the study was a systematic approach to understanding the problems of ensuring the psychological well-being of students through psychological support of education.Results. Problems of general psychological ill-being are among the most significant for ensuring the quality of education. Modern concepts, theories, and models of well-being are very multidirectional and diverse. Different theories, their proposed models of psychological well-being, diagnostic methods and work programs offer different indicators of well-being. Psychological well-being/ill-being is considered as a factor of mental stability/vulnerability to mental destabilizing, including pathologizing factors, which primarily include stress and trauma in a psychologically, socially and physically dangerous environment of human life. Such aspects of psychological well-being as a creative spirit and openness to new experiences, self-confidence and trust in the world, acceptance of oneself and the world, the desire for development block reactions of psychopathology and act as the goal of preventive and correctional-developmental psychological support. The university as institution of socialization, without support from the education system as a whole and its individual specialists and services in particular, become another source of trouble. The list of requirements for future specialists is increasing, including requirements for soft skills, and hopes for success are decreasing, burnout occurs, attempts to refuse, ignoring development and reality, they become too costly and difficult. This provokes both individual and mass departures such as the «great dismissal»; many students and even graduate students do not complete their education as a result of feeling incompetent as one of the consequences of learned helplessness. The importance of fundamental correction of the management system of social, including educational relations, management of the flow of tasks with the construction of registers of directions, procedures, methods, including more or less specialized programs of psychological support of education, exercise systems adjusted to the specifics of the client’s situation, sets of tasks in the context of trainings, (self-) study courses, consultations, mediations, etc. Conclusion. At different stages of its development, including in the context of obtaining higher (professional) education, the key to the effectiveness of psychological support of the educational process is targeted, systematic, timely and consistently organized psychological work with students and other subjects of education directed towards preventing and resolving problems of conflicts and crises of personal, interpersonal and educational and professional formation and development. This involves identifying leading directions and applying a set of measures and programs that change the educational process at the university at the level of training and education tasks, including (re) training of support service specialists who are ready and capable of successful team (interdisciplinary) work, including conditions of macro-social crises such as pandemics, military actions, emergencies and disasters.