niversity and college counseling centers, mental health centers, and health centers contribute to their institution's mission by providing services aimed at improving student psychological well-being and physical health. In this issue of the Journal of College Counseling, four Research articles examine some of the dynamics influencing student needs; a Professional Issues and Innovative Practice article introduces a new assessment tool designed for use with college clients; and two College Counseling Case Studies articles illustrate some of the ways health, mental health, and well-being intersect.
Highlighting the connection between psychological and physical well-being, Chia-Chih DC Wang and Carrie CastaΓ±eda-Sound report in the issue's first Research article that, along with endorsing lower levels of academic self-efficacy, first-generation undergraduates tend to experience more somatic symptoms of distress than do their non-first-generation peers. The authors also report on the role of family support for first-generation college students.
Gina Gibson-Beverly and Jonathan P. Schwartz then focus attention on the well-being of female graduate students. In their study, the authors found that female graduate students' entitlement orientations and attachment styles influenced the degree to which they accepted positive feedback from others and reported consistent self-attributes. In the article that follows, Frederick G. Lopez and Alia Fons-Scheyd report on a study that examined attachment orientations among a diverse undergraduate participant sample. These researchers found that attachment orientation interacted with role balance capabilities to predict students' report of depression.
In the last Research article, which examines mental health factors among international learners on U.S. campuses, Johanna E. Nilsson, Jenay Butler, Sarah Shouse, and Chetan Joshi found that perfectionism and acculturation experiences, together, accounted for 50% of the variance in stress among the Asian international students they investigated, with perceived prejudice being especially salient.
All these authors describe implications of their results for everyday college counseling practice, discuss their studies' limitations, and note the constraints of their findings.