Counselor value guidance and lower psychological crisis vulnerability: dual meaning-and-resilience pathways in cross-sectional and cluster-randomized evidence from Chinese universities

Introduction Psychological crisis vulnerability among Chinese university students remains an urgent concern, yet protective institutional resources are less well specified than risk pathways. We examined whether counselor value guidance, operationalized as autonomy-supportive counselor relating in a value-relevant context, is associated with lower crisis vulnerability through two complementary mechanisms: meaning construction and resilience building. Methods Study 1 was a cross-sectional survey of 800 undergraduates testing parallel mediation and moderation by value internalization. Study 2 was an exploratory cluster-randomized trial across 16 intact classes (400 recruited; 319 complete cases) evaluating a 6-week structured value-guidance workshop against lecture-based mental-health control. Because Study 2 was internally time-stamped but not prospectively registered in a public registry, H3-H4b are framed as exploratory intervention tests guided by Study 1’s a priori model. Results In Study 1, counselor value guidance negatively predicted crisis vulnerability, β = −0.373, 95% CI (−0.435, −0.314). Indirect effects through meaning [−0.068, 95% CI (−0.107, −0.031)] and resilience [−0.115, 95% CI (−0.148, −0.085)] were significant. The pathway contrast included zero, and post-hoc TOST bounded the difference within ± 0.10 standardized units. Value internalization moderated the meaning pathway [index = −0.022, 95% CI (−0.036, −0.010)]. In Study 2, the Group × Time effect on crisis vulnerability was significant, F (2, 634) = 20.48, p < 0.001, partial η 2 = 0.061, with T2 d = 0.43 and T3 d = 0.37. Intervention-induced changes in meaning and resilience both mediated vulnerability change, with nearly identical indirect effects (−0.036 and −0.035). Conclusion Across correlational and exploratory intervention evidence, counselor value guidance was associated with lower crisis vulnerability, with meaning and resilience functioning as parallel statistical pathways of comparable order of magnitude. Publicly preregistered replications with longer follow-up are needed before the parallel-magnitude pattern is treated as confirmatory.