Kathleen Sebelius was sworn in as the 21st secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on April 28, 2009. Since joining the Obama administration, she has been a key strategist in the federal effort to improve the health of Americans and enhance the delivery of human services to
Tag: Counselors Audience
Counselors Audience
When a military plane on a routine mission from Anchorage, Alaska, to Juneau crashed and killed all eight service members aboard in 1994, Judy Mathewson found herself thinking about the families of the deceased and their need to grieve. “I knew the children who had lost their fathers that day
Imagine this scenario: You are a counselor, and you have two clients. They are the same age and same gender, and both experienced the death of a partner at roughly the same period in life. So, you can reasonably expect that both will have similar reactions to that parallel loss
The economic crisis of 2008 is still with us. Jobs for mental health and school counselors have been – and continue to be – cut. We hear about the possibility of more terminations to come in the media. Among the rumors of downsizing are some that indicate the trend will
African Americans are a complex cultural group. Although considered to be one culture, many cultural differences exist within this group. That same statement could be applied to any culture, but it is African Americans who have one of the most historically oppressive pasts and who continue to face numerous microaggressions along
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity now affects 17 percent of U.S. children and adolescents, which adds up to roughly 12.5 million kids. Since 1980, obesity prevalence among this group has almost tripled. Among children and adolescents ages 2 to 19, being overweight translates to a body-mass
When budding counselors finish their graduate programs and head out into the world with degrees in hand, they face an often complex decision — whether to specialize in a certain area of counseling in hopes of working with a particular type of client or issue or whether to serve a
Working directly with parents can be either terribly frustrating or exceptionally gratifying. Many counselors initially feel both fear and frustration at the prospect of counseling parents. That was certainly the case for me. I not only felt intimidated, but I also held several negative beliefs about parents that adversely affected
One of the pillars of the counseling is empowering clients to achieve the goals they have set themselves. But over time, counselors have also placed greater focus on international issues and social justice counseling. Manivong J. Ratts, president of Counselors for Social Justice, a division of the American Counseling Association, calls
When I was younger, I often wondered how it was possible that elderly people weren’t consumed with fear of the inevitable. But Erik Erikson seemed to have a “good enough” theory to settle my inner turmoil. As an undergraduate back in the early 1970s, I surmised from Erikson’s theory that