Being at a university brings opportinities for young people to achieve their personal growth,but at the same time this involves a threat to their emotional well-being. New knowledge and experience in the university challenge students’ existing level of development.At the same time the learning process in the university also brings a risk of temporary loss of balance which can result in psychological distress. With the aim to help students cope with their personal problems and to help them work towards personel development,some universities provide a counselling service for their students (Setiawan,2006). A number of research studies have been carried out to investigate factors which influence the decision to seek counselling help including discouraging and encouraging factors.Many different factors have been found to be involved in the decision to seek counselling.In general,these can be grouped into three broad categories : Personal factors (including personal characteristics and situations); Socio-cultural factors (including cultural values or a certain social group’s characteristics) and Agency factors (including factors relating to counselling services such as the service,counsellor,or other administrative issues) (Fischer et al.,1983). Previous studies showed that counselling has a positive impact on retention through addressing some underlying developmental themes (Rickinson &Rutherford,1995). It was found that students attending counselling appeared to be beter equipped to adjust to the social and academic demands of the university environment (Setiawan,2006) Research on college students’ problems and needs has indicated that students are likely to encounter psychological problems during their college years for which they are in need of professional help (e.g.Al-Samadi& Al Tahan,1997;Heppner, Kivlighan, Good, Roehlke, Hills&Ashby,1994;Soliman,1993,Fischer,1972;Fischer,1995;Al-Darmaki,2003). Many factors have been associated with people`s attitudes toward seeking psychological help Reasons for such attitudes toward seeking professional help have been extensively studied (Wills& De Paulo,1991). Personal attitudes toward psychological services are important determinants of a person’s response toward seeking professional help for emotional and other problems or avoiding getting such help (Al-Darmaki,2003). Like universities in many other countries,some universities in Turkey provide a counselling service for their students.

This study investigated attitudes toward seeking psychological help among college students in Turkey. The sample of the study consisted of 390 undergraduate students attending Gazi University in Ankara. All the participants were presented with Attitudes Toward Seeking Psychological Help Scale developed by Türküm (2001) T-test and Pearson` s product moment correlation coefficient were applied for statistical analysis. The current study aimed to investigate attitudes toward seekıng professıonal psychologıcal help among Turkısh students.Specially it focused on these following objectives: to assess Turkısh students’ level of willingness to seek counselling to identify factors which discourage them from seeking counselling and to identify factors which encourage them to seek counselling.

After the analysis of the data, the findings of the study will be discussed. In conclusion, the results of this study may be useful for planning of psychological counseling. This study would inform the implications for the development of counselling service practice in Turkey.