Intro Flashcards
What is counselling psychology?
- a specialization within psychology
- use psych. principles to enhance growth, well being, mental health
- brings a collab., developmental, multicultural perspective to practice
What is Guidance?
Difference between guidance & counselling?
- process of helping people make important CHOICES that affect their lives
- guidance: helps individuals CHOOSE what they value most
- counselling: make change
What is Pschotherapy?
- focus on serious issues; reconstructive change; CHARACTER REORGANIZATION
- Emphasis:
a. past more than present
b. insight more than change
c. detachment of the therapist
d. therapists’ role as an expert - long term: 20-40 sessions over 6m-2yrs
What is counselling?
- use of relationships to facilitate self-knowledge, emotional acceptance & growth; CHANGE Emphasis: a. development issues b. overcoming specific problems c. coping d. improving relationships e. overcoming feeling associated with inner conflicts - here & now; short term,
The Counselling Psychology discipline includes:
- broad practice & research focus
- promoting wellness
- collaborative research & practice
- overlapping with other specialties
- prevention
- advocacy
- multicultural approach
- adherence to core values: holistic & client centered focus; own ability to make personal changes; sensitivity to diversity/multiculturalism
The counselling psychology contains implicit/explicit points
- counselling deals with wellness, personal growth, career and pathological concerns
- conducted with persons who are considered to be functioning well and those who are having mores serious problems
- theory based
- process that may be developmental or intervening
History
Before 1900
- counseling = advice/info
- developed during Industrial rev. to improve lives of people
- Focus: teach about self, others, & world of work (Canada- child & youth counselling)
- Freud”s psychodynamic approach dominated the helping profession
History
1900-1909
- Mental Health Movement & Vocational Guidance Movement
- Frank Parsons
- Clifford Beers
- Clarence Hicks
- Jessie B. Davis
History 1910s-1940s - Smith Hughes Act - World War One - Great Depression - World War Two
- Smith Hughes Act (1917): provided schools with funding to support vocational ed. ((+) growth in counselling profession)
- WW1: Psychological instruments used when employing testing & placement practices for military personal; psychometrics
- Great D: strategies/counsel related to employement
- WW2: Psychological instruments - test construction for selecting/classifying military personnel; CPA (1939)
- Edward Thorndike; John Brewer; Carl Rogers; E.G. Williamson
- CAN. Vocational Counsel. replaced teachers in areas of testing & counsel
Frank Parson’s
“father of guidance”
Focus: growth & prevention
- worked with young people who were in the process of making career decisions
- vocational guidance based on rationality & reason (knowledge of work; self; matching of the 2 through “true reasoning”)
Clifford Beers
- hospitalized for depression
- exposed mental health facilities = advocate for better mental health facilities
- influence psychiatry and clinical psych = “counselling” –> means of helping people adjust to self & society
Clarence Hicks
- experienced mental health problems
- worked with Beers on Mental Hygiene –> Canadian Mental Health Association
Jesse B. Davis
- youth guidance on a group level
- vocational guidance is about teaching people how to live a good life - moral vocational guidance
Psychometrics
- positive
- negative
+ gave vocational guidance specialists a stronger and more “scientific” identity
- distraction from examining developments in other behavioral sciences (social, athro, bio)
Edward Thorndike
- challenged vocational orientation of the guidance movement
John Brewer
- Every teacher be a counselor and guidance be a part of curriculum
- prepare students to live outside school environment
Carl Rogers
- challenged the counselor-centered approach
- importance of the client and a non-directed approach to counseling
- clients responsible for their own growth = more genuine & know self better
- professional helper: non-judgemental & accepting; mirror
E.G. Williamson
- first theory of counselling
- directive counselor focus- identify deficits and prescribe corrective activities
History
1950s-1990s
- Decrease in vocational guidance/increase in personal counselling
- Canadian Guidance Counsellors Association
- Division 17 Counseling Psych. formed with APA
1970
- counselling outside ed. institutions
- development of helping skills programs - relationship & communication skills
1980
- standardized tests & 8 areas to be knowledgeable in
1990s
- multicultural counselling,
- more awareness with social factors (mental disorders, maintenance & development- spirituality, family, env., SES impact
Trends in Counseling Psych
- regulation of professional counseling
- trauma and crisis
- promoting wellness
- social justice and diversity
- growth of leadership
- feminization of counseling psych.
What is positive psych?
- strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive
- 3 central concerns:
positive emotions, positive individual traits, positive intuitions
What counselling is NOT
- Talking to someone like a friend Giving advice (guidance) Solving other’s problems Creating major personality change Prescriptive Focusing on the intrapsychic (unconscious)
The Nature & Uniqueness of the
Counselling Relationship
Counselling involves a unique, interpersonal relationship between two experts: client & counsellor
Interventions & interactions are based on theory
It is guided by ethical and professional standards
Counsellors take into consideration the client’s socio-cultural and political circumstances
Counsellors refrain from advice-giving or guidance to promote client self-sufficiency/independence
How does professional helper differ from a helper?
- science
- intentionality
Typical Concerns
Depression Anxiety Relationship Difficulties Family Difficulties Trauma Experiences Educational/Learning Difficulties Grief and Bereavement Adjustment Issues and Life Transition Issues Substance and Process Addictions
What Professionals Do This Work in
Canada?
Psychologists
Psychiatrists
Social Workers
Professional Counsellors
Effective Treatment Providers
Effective therapists are individuals who have a combination of PERSONAL QUALITIES that lend itself to their work with others, EDUCATION and training in helping and who USE THEORIES and systems of
counselling to guide their work
Qualities/Characteristics of
Effective Therapists
- monitor own biases
- empathetic
- movement is timed
- energy
- flexible
Personal Qualities
Curiosity about people and their experiences
Capacity to listen & self reflect
High degrees of empathy and compassion
Emotional maturity and insightfulness
Psychological health
Capacity to set their needs aside
Emotional/Relational/Intellectual categories of qualities
Characteristics
Stability, harmony, constancy and purposefulness
Master Therapists” Skovolt (1999)
Voracious learners Draw from experience Value cognitive complexity Emotionally open Non-Defensive Mentally healthy/mature Attentive to their own emotional well being Strong relationship skills and are expert in using those skills in therapy Believe that the foundation for change is the working alliance
Occupational Hazards…
Providing therapy can be difficult and exhausting
(BURNOUT/VICARIOUS TRAUMA)
Being affected by this work is to some degree inevitable
How people are affected is influenced by a variety of factors
Beyond the work itself we all will go through our own
difficulties which may make our work more challenging
Distress is unavoidable but left unaddressed can lead to
professional impairment
Counsellors are expected to know when your functioning is impaired and are ethically bound to look after oneself
Attribution
*
Attribution - attributes teh cause of the clients problem
Medical Model: no responsibility - clients may become dependent
Moral Model: responsible for doing/solving - may be victims of circumstances
Compensatory Model: solving problems +partnership to solve - client may feel undue pressure @ having to continueally slove probelms didn’t create
Enlightenment Model: responsible for causing + feel relief - dependent,
What are the levels of helping
- nonprofessional helper
- generalist human service worker
- professional helper
negative motivators for becoming a counselor
- emotional distress
- vicarious coping
- loneliness and isolation
- desire for power
- need for love
- vicarious rebellion
how to avoid burnout
- set aside free private time
- stress decreasing exercises
- associate with healthy individuals
System of Counselling
**
Systems of Counselling - set of ideas how to approach client
Developmental/Wellness: sequence of development/own resources to solve problems - Solution Focused Theory: SIT- help understand problem, acquire skills to cope
Medical Pathological Model: base treatment plans in accordance with the DSM
DSM IV (and V!): manual of mental disorders
DSM
Axis 1: focus of clinical attention
- diagnostic info only on personal disorders
- general medical condition
- psychosocial and environment problems that may affect diagnosis, treatment & prognosis
- global assessment of relational functioning on a scale of 0-100
pros and cons to DSM
- frames mental disorders as dispositions
- discrimination, poverty is lost in DSM
- only diagnosis of individual diagnosis. limited value to groups, family counsel
+ logically organized, good network
+ universally used
+ recognized mental distress paterns
+ establishes credibility
STIPS
- signsand symptoms
- topics discussed in counselling
- counselling interventions used
- clients progress and counselor continuing plan for treatment
- any special issues of importance
Realities
- several theoretical models of supervision
- ## developmental level of supervisior must be verified before productive supervisory
