The USB Psychological Counselling Centre provides help and support in:

Personal growth (guiding the client in better understanding themselves, learning about their strong points, etc.)
Handling interpersonal relationships (between partners, in family and others)
Children upbringing
Psychological problems (depression, anxiety, psychosomatic and chronic disorders, addictive behaviour and substances)
Adapting to university study and life
Adapting to early school experience (for USB students and graduate teacher trainees into three years of teaching)
Academic struggles, pre-examination excitement and exam fever
Effective learning and procrastination management

Psychological assistance and support can be delivered as:

Psychological counselling

The aim of counselling is to help the client solve a particular problem through finding their own resources and ways to tackle the issue in their natural surroundings, while broadening their perspective on potential solutions, along with providing pertinent information about the complaint, and offering advice, jointly with demonstrating useful new skills. The counsellor is perceived as a knowledgeable person. This support is mostly a short-term involvement (1 to 10 sessions).

Psychotherapeutic care

Psychotherapy is designed to cure psychic disturbances and illnesses through psychological means. Otherwise it may bring welcome relief from physical suffering and relationship problems. It examines the whole personality profile and its impact on the current disorder. In contrast to counselling, psychotherapeutic care is more profound, relying on its essential tool, i.e. the relationship with the therapeutist. It provides safety, esteem, empathy and confidentiality as a basis for initiating healing processes. Psychotherapy can focus on an individual, a couple or a family, taking the form of individual, pair and group treatment. Supportive psychotherapy is not aimed at cure and change but at guidance. It helps one to alleviate a grave situation or problems which they cannot or do not want to change.

Crisis response services

They are available if there is an urgent psychosocial crisis triggered by an unusual life-changing event (death, serious illness, the breakdown of a relationship, being victim of violence, a survivor or participant in a tragic road accident). Crisis management counselling endeavours to reduce the danger threatening a client by discovering and strengthening their capacity to cope with strain in order to prevent negative or destructive solutions to the emergency.

Pedagogical counselling

Pedagogical counselling is provided to USB undergraduates and graduates, i.e. teacher trainees up to 3 years of school experience. Our services include solutions for particular difficult situations arising in real life during the school training which a student or teacher trainee wants to manage individually with the counsellor’s help. Our counselling is not expected to replace the school experience reflection as encouraged in seminars, but to offer another potential approach to the problem. In addition, our counselling is aimed at tackling pedagogical situations faced by teacher trainees at the beginning of their teaching career. Students and teacher trainees can hold consultations with us about transferring the theoretical knowledge acquired at the PF USB to practice. Moreover, our services embrace counselling related to problems occurring during the adaptation phase of training with regard to special pedagogy.

Psychological and professional diagnostics

Diagnostic services are offered in the form of psychological testing followed by a consultation on the results and the potential consequences for the client’s personal life, for their study or professional relationships. Our services can help the client recognise their intellectual ability; to identify their personal characteristics; to discover their suitability and unsuitability for their profession; to seek advice on employing the advantages and disadvantages of their personal profile in study and at work; to relieve and handle stress; to treat their psychic and somatic disorders; to express and control their emotions; to examine their role in close relations and in a group. The acquired judgements and advice can be further implemented in the follow-up individual consultations (psychotherapy, counselling) with the staff who will render the client assistance on their way to personal alteration, to the acceptance of their personal qualifications, to boosting their self-confidence, to gaining strength for the imperative riddance of various addictions.