Mental Health Support Services in Universities: A Dyadic Exploration of Students’ and Counsellors’ Perspectives

Background: Mental health issues among university students are a growing global concern, including in Malaysia. This exploratory study aims to examine mental health support systems in Malaysian universities using a dyadic perspective, capturing both students’ and counsellors’ experiences. This addresses a key gap in the literature, which has largely relied on single-perspective accounts. Methods: A qualitative exploratory design was employed using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 students receiving mental health support and 10 university counsellors. The data were analysed using hybrid deductive–inductive thematic analysis. Results: Three themes emerged from the findings. The first theme showed that students sought support once distress affected their daily functioning, valuing trust, safety, and emotional guidance, while counsellors described a parallel process of assessing student needs and facilitating longer term recovery. The second theme identified barriers shared by both groups, namely limited awareness of services and stigma, alongside additional constraints reported only by counsellors, including staffing shortages, unclear referral pathways, and limited institutional support. The third theme centred on strategies for improvement, including early assessment, awareness campaigns, digital accessibility, resilience building, and stronger collaboration among students, counsellors, and university stakeholders. Conclusions: This study contributes to the literature by integrating three complementary theoretical perspectives to explain university students’ mental health support experiences, support networks, and help-seeking behaviour. The findings also provide practical guidance for university administrators, counsellors, and policymakers seeking to develop more accessible, proactive, and student-centred mental health support systems. As the study is based on qualitative, cross-sectional data, the findings should be interpreted as indicative rather than causal. Nonetheless, they suggest that strengthening such initiatives may contribute to more supportive and responsive mental health provision within higher education institutions.