Following the tragic mass school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, policymakers at the national and state levels are considering policies both to restrict access to guns and to increase access to mental health and student support services. Most notably, President Obama released a broad set of proposals in mid-January that included
Month: March 2013
Your first client of the day recently survived a Category 4 hurricane, while your next client reports that she survived a mass school shooting several years ago. Both clients have experienced trauma in the form of a collective community disaster. Nevertheless, the causes, symptoms, courses of treatment and counseling interventions
Autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia may not seem on the surface like they have much in common. But according to a National Institute of Mental Health-funded study, they share the same genetic codes and risks, which can possibly help better diagnose and treat the disorders
What constitutes the identity of a counselor? Perhaps the answer, in its simplest form, can be found in the way that counselors introduce themselves. Martin Ritchie keeps it simple: “Hello, I’m Martin Ritchie, and I’m a professional counselor.” “I learned this from Sam Gladding,” says Ritchie, professor and chair of
Click here to read part one of this series. In my previous article, I introduced the concept of the cloud-based practice management system and began to detail how it can help counselors achieve a paperless office. I covered tracking of client data, scheduling, clinical notes and the Health Insurance Portability
Last month, I received the sad news that ACA past president Gail Robinson had passed away. Gail was our 45th president and served during the 1996-1997 program year. You can read more about Gail’s role in the association on page 62. In addition, I am going to share with you some
Some months after starting my private practice in Japan, I (Yukio Fujikura) received an email from a Japanese American woman asking for an opportunity to do her counseling practicum at my practice. While living in Tokyo, she was pursuing her degree through an online school counseling program offered by a
Counseling is a profession… but being a counselor is a way of life. A counselor personifies the values, beliefs, goals and practices on which the profession of counseling is based. Although becoming a counselor is necessarily developed through quality education and experience, the core of being a counselor comes from
Marsha Linehan developed dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) in the early 1990s specifically for the treatment of borderline personality disorder. DBT is a multifaceted treatment approach that includes facets of cognitive behavior skills training, mindfulness meditation, behaviorism and dialectics. Though none of these individual aspects is novel on its own, implementing
On occasion, even the best counselors in the field find themselves feeling stagnant or bogged down by routine — stuck in a box rather than thinking outside the box and trying new things with clients. A new joint initiative launched by the American Counseling Association and the Association for Creativity