AWARENESS AND NEED FOR PREVENTIVE COUNSELING OF MENTAL ILLNESS AMONG GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING STUDENTS IN NASARAWA STATE UNIVERSITY, KEFFI.

The study investigated awareness of mental illness symptoms among Guidance counseling students in Nasarawa State University, Keffi. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select students across all level of the programme. The researchers designed Awareness of Mental Illness Symptoms Sales (AMISS) for data collection with an internal consistency of 0.7. Three research hypotheses were generated and subjected to the use of t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The result revealed that there was significant difference in the awareness of mental illness symptoms of300L and 400L students and also there was significant difference in the awareness of mental illness symptoms of M.Ed and Ph.D students and there way also significant difference in I00L and 200L students. The finding of this study has implication for preventive counselling. It was recommended that both the counsellor trainer and trainees be aware of mental illness symptoms so that they can continue to reeducate their clients for their mental wellbeing and self-development