Having kids and young adults train rescue dogs isn’t technically animal assisted therapy, but for the kids—and dogs—involved in the Teacher’s Pet program, the result has definitely been therapeutic. The youth —with the help of professional animal trainers— use positive reward-based training to increase local rescue dogs’ chances of being
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W ith spring’s arrival, we welcome many new graduates at the master’s and doctoral levels into the counseling profession. Some will continue on in their studies, whereas others will begin preparing for state licensure, look for jobs in K-12 schools or figure out how to repay student loans. Regardless of
After just wrapping up Counseling Awareness Month in April, we are heading into Mental Health Month, an initiative begun by Mental Health America that the American Counseling Association has participated in for decades. We know that counselors help people who have mental or emotional disorders, but counselors also help people
As humans, we are wired to fear the unknown. A case in point: We often look askance at new technology, suspicious that it will completely upend our lives and perhaps even destroy society as we know it. These dire predictions have greeted every new technology, going back (in all likelihood)
Johnnetta Betsch Cole couldn’t help but chuckling at the audacity (or, as she phrased it, the “chutzpah”) of the keynote message she was about to deliver to the thousands of counselors congregated Saturday morning at the ACA 2018 Conference & Expo in Atlanta. With charismatic presence — and a knowing
Dolores Huerta can be described in many ways: labor organizer, feminist, civil rights pioneer, social justice icon, impassioned speaker and lifelong advocate for the oppressed. On Friday, Huerta delivered a stirring keynote address to open the ACA 2018 Conference & Expo that proved the 88 year-old has lost none of
In 2013, officials in Melbourne, Australia, assigned the city’s trees ID numbers and email addresses to make it easier for citizens to report problems such as fallen limbs and unwieldy branches. However, Melburnians used the email-a-tree-service for another purpose: to talk directly to the trees. They sent emails to the
Licensed professional counselor (LPC) John Duggan didn’t plan on bipolar disorder becoming one of his specialties, but providing emergency room support gave him a close-up view of the consequences when the disease was left uncontrolled. Duggan, who is also a licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC), noticed the escalation in manic
There is no perfect plan when it comes to self-care. The important thing is to have a plan and make self-care a career-long focus. Not only will the methods that counselors find effective vary from practitioner to practitioner, but a self-care routine will also need to evolve to meet changing
No matter my professional role, there always seems to exist the need to send out the same email over and over again. Either I write the same email monthly or annually, or I write the same email and send it to multiple people. When I was in private practice, it