The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 3 232 college high school. With high academic achievement being a common factor in the development of perfectionism (Damian et al., 2017), reducing self-oriented perfectionism is crucial within this population, as students with higher levels of self-oriented perfectionism are less likely to seek formal support and more likely to suffer in silence (Zeifman et al., 2015). Despite findings that did not support statistically significant differences in socially prescribed perfectionism between treatment and comparison groups, there was a decrease in socially oriented perfectionism for both groups. Additionally, both groups noted lower levels of socially prescribed perfectionism compared to self-oriented perfectionism. Socially prescribed perfectionism is most consistently associated with mental health stigma and concerns around attending counseling (Dang et al., 2020). Therefore, the student’s right to ultimately determine their initial and ongoing participation in the study may indicate they were more comfortable and not as concerned about participating in group counseling services even before the intervention started. Therefore, participants’ lower levels of socially prescribed perfectionism may have skewed the lack of statistically significant differences found between groups and minimal changes between pretest and posttest scores. Collectively, these findings support the argument that perfectionism is a transdiagnostic process. A transdiagnostic process is “an aspect of cognition or behavior that may contribute to the maintenance of a psychological disorder” (Egan et al., 2014, p. 40). Studies have recognized levels of perfectionism are elevated across disorders (Egan et al., 2014; Handley et al., 2014) and as a maintaining factor across disorders (Egan et al., 2011). Within this study, the finding of a significant large effect size in terms of reducing negative affectivity is fascinating, as the CBT-P intervention does not target these symptoms directly. Overall, this study supports Egan and colleagues’ (2011) claim that CBT-P significantly decreases a wide range of psychological symptoms through its focus on perfectionism (Egan et al., 2011). However, it is important to note that other therapeutic factors of the modified CBT-P small group intervention may have contributed to an overall decrease in negative affectivity. Finally, this study also supports Feiss and colleagues’ (2019) assertion that targeted programming is more effective than universal programming in addressing internalizing symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and stress. Implications for Practice and Future Research The findings of this study extend what is known about the underlying factors that impact highachieving students’ overall well-being and unique needs. The study results offer support for CBT-P as an effective intervention for decreasing negative affectivity and aspects of perfectionism in high-achieving students. However, further research is needed to identify other beneficial, targeted interventions to help support this population (Colangelo & Wood, 2015). Additionally, counselor education programs need more education and training when working with the high-achieving population in accelerated programs (O'Brennan et al., 2019), as adolescents present with the highest prevalence of mental health problems (Corry & Leavey, 2017). School counselors and other school-based professional counselors are well-positioned to address these problems through intervention. Unfortunately, increased national attention on student academic achievement has challenged school counselors to provide interventions that promote student academic success (Collins, 2014), and the duality of school counselors’ roles in addressing both mental health and academic needs serves as a barrier to providing students with adequate mental health support (Lambie et al., 2019). Yet, school counselors must first address student mental health in order to improve student achievement (Collins, 2014), as students’ unmet mental health needs pose barriers to learning (American School Counselor Association, 2020). Findings from this study could help school counselors
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