The 20/20 Building Blocks to Portability Project recently concluded with widespread endorsement of both a single licensure title for counselors and a scope of practice for professional counseling. Of the participating organizations that voted, 28 of 29 endorsed the licensure title of Licensed Professional Counselor, and 27 of 29 endorsed
Month: October 2014
Those who have been reading these columns know about my affinity for certain words. More than one colleague has chided me about my favorite term: equifinality. I bring it up again here because the principle of equifinality (many possible avenues to reach a successful outcome) resonates with resilience and vision
As professional counselors and counselor educators, you work hard. You are dedicated and compassionate and feel a sense of responsibility to your students, clients and community. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that, collectively, your work affects millions of individuals, couples, families and groups each and every day. Because this
For the most part, the United States lacks a coherent and systematic approach to sexual education. Instead, as lampooned in an online issue of The Onion, sex education is typically informal, unorganized and inaccurate. The Onion article describes a scene in which a 10-year-old boy takes his 8-year-old cousin behind
As counselors know, the ethical and legal requirement of the “duty to warn” has been adopted as a standard of care across many helping professions. It probably represents one of the most universal elements of counseling ethics regardless of cultural or national identity. Based on the Hippocratic notion of “first,
The prevalence of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) among adolescents and young adults has rapidly and significantly increased in recent years, leading mental health professionals and researchers to describe its pervasiveness as epidemic. By definition, a person does not engage in NSSI with intent to die. Rather, NSSI is a means of
Professional counselors are routinely taught that clients are vulnerable to harm from ineffective therapy practices, but what about counseling students who can only trust that their supervisors have been properly authenticated and licensed?
One of the criticisms I have noted during my regular overseas travels is that a number of cultures view Americans as overly idealistic. A steady diet of fairy tale conclusions, Hollywood films and “reality” TV seem to set many Americans up for serial disappointment. I’ve lost track of the number
As a counselor and counselor educator, I am often pondering the recent trend of developing professional identity and what that means in applicable terms. Professional identity development has been heralded as involvement in professional organizations, legislation, mentoring, continuing education and supervision. These are effective ways to develop your own personal
“It becomes obvious from the get-go that the therapist, client and supporting characters aren’t going to have everything neatly wrapped up by the end. They remind us that we’re just broken people trying to help one another make sense of a complex world.”