The effect of psychological first aid psycho-education program on psychological first aid skills of psychological counselor candidates

The main aim of this research is to investigate the effect of Psychological First Aid Psycho-Education Program on psychological first aid application skills of Psychological Counselor Candidates. The research was planned in two phases. First phase is to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool to measure the psychological first aid skills level of psychological counselor participants. A total of 853 students from different universities participated in the scale development process. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to determine the construct validity of the Psychological First Aid Skills Scale (PFASS), and Comfirmatory Factor Analysis was performed on a different study group to evaluate the construct validity of the resulting model. Psychological Counselor Self-efficacy Scale was applied for similar scale validity. As a result of this study, to measure the psychological first aid skills level of psychological counselor candidates, measurement tool consisting of 35 items and nine sub-dimensions, namely "Dependence Contact, Safety Comfort, Stabilization, Gathering Information and Practical Help, Connection for Social Support, Coping Skills, Coorperation, Self Care and Ethically Behave", was obtained. On the second phase of this research, Psychological First Aid Psycho-Education Program was developed and its efficiency was tested. Within the scope of resaerch, two (experimental and control) × three (pre-test / post-test / follow-up) quasi-experimental design was used. While the independent variable of the research consists of psycho-education program applied to experimental group between pre-test and post-test, dependent variable consists of psychological first aid skills level of participants. In accordance with the main target of this research, 28 psychological counselor candidates participated in the study in two different groups, experimental (14 students) and control (14 students). In the study, data was obtained by Personal Information Form and PFASS. Within the scope of resaerch, 10-session Psychological First Aid Psycho-Education Program (PFA-PP) was applied to the participants of the experimental group, there was no application for the participants of the control group until experimental process and follow-up test were completed. In the process of the study, Pre-test before experimental process, post-test after the experimental process, and one month later follow-up test measurements was applied to experimental and control groups. In the process of data analysis, "Friedman's Test", Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test", and "Mann Whitney U" were used to determine the meaningful differences among the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up test measurements of the groups and data was analyzed. As a result of this study, it was obtained that PFASS total scores of the students applied PFA-PP in the control group increased and this increase showed meaningful differences. In addition, it was revealed that there was a meangful difference between PFASS total scores of experimental and control group paticipants in post-test on behalf of experimental group. In line with these results, it was determined that the Psychological First Aid Skills Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool in determining the psychological first aid skills level of psychological counselor candidates and that the Psychological First Aid Pscho-Education Program is an effective program for developing the psychological first aid skills level of psychological counselor candidates. Results obtained from the study were discussed in the context of the relevant literatüre and suggestions were presented to researchers and psychiatric care personels particularly psychological counselors.