If you provide counseling services to clients who have autism, or any of several other mental health conditions, at some point you will inevitably work with them on social skills. And if you are like many of the practitioners I know, you have a sizeable collection of the various resources
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Thanks in part to the advocacy efforts of the American Counseling Association, mental health services are among the major elements included in a resolution that will inform and influence the United Nations’ strategic plan for 2015-2030. ACA has been designated an official U.N. nongovernmental organization (NGO) for nearly a decade.
Jamie P. Merisotis is president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation committed solely to enrolling and graduating more students from college. In celebration of the opening of the 2014-2015 academic year, Frank Burtnett, editor of ACAeNews for School Counselors, asked Merisotis to present an overview of
Diagnosisitis. Or, as it’s more commonly known, overpathologizing — an affliction that affects many counselors both seasoned and new. People most often come to counselors because they have a problem and need help. As counselors, whenever someone comes to see us, we flip the switch and turn on the counselor
The adjective “schizophrenic” needs to be removed from counselors’ vocabulary, says Elizabeth Prosek, a counselor and assistant professor at the University of North Texas (UNT). Schizophrenia has a great deal of stigma and negative connotations associated with it, and referring to clients in the first person can lessen these, she
When I first met Ally, 17, she surveyed the seating arrangement in my office and chose the chair closest to my door. Obviously guarded, she sat with both arms and legs crossed looking at me with green eyes slightly camouflaged by blond wispy bangs. Ally’s mother had been trying to
It is widely acknowledged that men are less likely than women to seek help for mental health issues. At the same time, men’s issues can be misunderstood or overlooked by counselors, the majority of whom are women, say Matt Englar-Carlson, Marcheta Evans and Thelma Duffey, the authors of A Counselor’s
The counseling environment is an essential component of the counseling process. Typical environments include the plush offices of private practitioners, the sterile rooms in public agency buildings and the generic spaces in school settings. The amount of space, the arrangement and quality of furniture, lighting and many other variables all
Less than 3 percent of U.S. adults identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual in a recent government survey, the first large-scale collection of statistics on sexual orientation. When asked about the findings, members of the Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues in Counseling, a division of the
Counselors are often urging their clients to learn from their past, to reflect on the decisions they have made and to consider how they have grown and changed. That lesson could – and should — be applied to the profession itself, according to the Historical Issues in Counseling Network. The