Growing number of students with mental health problems and relatively high number of students in need not receiving help prompt university counseling centers to look for alternative means to be used alongside with the traditional counseling. Self-help is considered as one of the most promising options. Striving to expand student counseling services at Psychology Clinic at Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), the unguided computerized solution-focused self-help program was developed by the article authors and put on service in 2014. The Program invites a user to take a virtual “space journey” visiting several planets each introducing a different solution-focused theme, and helps to seek positive changes in a wide range of life areas and difficulties. Aim. The aim of this article is to present the initial results on the Program’s potential to help university students in overcoming difficulties and improving psycho-social functioning, and to discuss the benefits of the introduction of the Program into the counseling services at Vytautas Magnus University. Methods. Subjective 10-point scales and standardized (OQ-45.2) measures were applied at the initial and the final evaluations with one month in-between. Results. The data of 24 students, who went through the entire Program, were analyzed showing that the Program attracted more students in need than the face-to-face counseling, was useful and positively evaluated by the participants, suggesting that computerized self-help tools based on strengths-oriented approaches and addressing a wide range of issues have the potential to make the psychological help more accessible for students as well as cost and time efficient for university counseling centers.

In the recent literature, devoted to the psychology of adolescence, a new tendency evolves to focus on the factors and indicators of the positive development, rather than only on the risk factors for problematic development. Nevertheless, the lack of measures which would not be based on the pathology perspective and at the same time assessing the broad spectrum of the adolescents’ everyday life functioning areas could be noted. The aim of the article is to present the revision process and psychometric properties of one of such methods – Adolescent Psychological Functioning Difficulties Questionnaire (after revision – Adolescent Psychological Functioning Questionaire). Methods and materials. The preliminary psychometric analysis (Pakrosnis, Cepukiene, 2009) leaded to the decision to replace the dichotomous scaling responses system, assessing the presence/absence of certain behaviors with the one based on the 5-point Likert scale, assessing the frequency of behaviors and allowing to use the questionnaire for measuring changes in the psychological functioning over time. This led to the need to correct formulation of some items and repeat the psychometric analysis of the revised questionnaire. For this purpose the data from 1049 adolescents (12-18 years) was collected. The factor analysis, internal consistency, test-retest analysis and comparisons between age, gender and family status groups were conducted. Results and conclusions. The new factor structure of 6 factors explains higher percent of total variance (48%) comparing to the previous one of 5 factors (29%) and allows evaluating not only psychological functioning difficulties (Non-adaptive behavior and Emotional difficulties scales), but indicators of good functioning as well (Socially adaptive behavior, Caring behavior, Adjustment at school, Self-confidence scales). [...]