Counseling Specializations and Multidisciplinary Teams, Essay Example

The philosophy of prevention is foundational to the counseling profession overall. Counseling psychology itself, a profession that emerged during the first half of the 20^th century, has arguably always been concerned with prevention in some form or another (Vera & Polanin, 2013, p. 10). However, therapists took a renewed focus on prevention in the 1960s and 1970s, as Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter led the push for improvements in community mental health (p. 10). The pendulum swung the other way under Reagan, but by the late 80’s the profession’s focus on prevention was again secure, and it has continued to gain recognition (Conyne, Horne, & Raczynski, 2013, p. 14; Vera & Polanin, 2013, p. 10). Prevention, in essence, is the philosophy of promoting positive mental health, from a developmental perspective: precluding disorders by helping the patient to maximize their well-being (Conyne, Horne, & Raczynski, 2013, p. 14).

A focus on resilience and wellness is essential to prevention. Resilience can be thought of as the ability to recover quickly (Brehm & Doll, 2009, p. 56). It can also describe a person’s ability to find and focus on the positive, since this makes them that much tougher and more capable of dealing with stressors (p. 56). Wellness counseling is designed to build resilience by helping patients to develop the skills needed to find and focus on the positive aspects of their lives, and the resources that they can use to combat depression and other mental illnesses (Seligman, 2004, p. 51). Like prevention, wellness counseling is holistic in its perspective, aimed at seeing the client’s whole person and the context in which they live in order to help them maximize their wellbeing (p. 51).

My own specialty is marriage and family therapy. One of the most important influences on my specialty historically was the marriage counseling movement, which began in the 1920s (Rasheed, Rasheed, & Marley, 2011, p. 9). This was before there were specific marriage counselors, so different kinds of professionals provided counseling for couples: “clergy, lawyers, gynecologists, social workers, and college professors” (pp. 9-10). The movement began to go professional by the close of the decade (p. 10). The child guidance movement began to emerge around the same period, the Progressive Era, as a means of rectifying behavioral problems in delinquent youth (pp. 10-11). Marriage and family therapy began to emerge as a proper profession in its own right in the 1970s, with the advent of the first professional standards for training and certifying counselors in 1975 (Bischoff, 2011, p. 4).

Another specialization that would clearly enhance the work to be done in the case of the girl Ashley is that of school psychologist. School psychology, though in many ways a very young specialty, is also rooted in the Progressive Era of the early 20^th century, with the advent of compulsory schooling and new child labor laws that sent children from the factories to the classrooms (Merrell, Ervin, & Peacock, 2012, p. 24). A less savory association is the link between the early beginnings of school psychology and the highly racist and eugenics-supporting IQ testing movement in the early 20^th century: school psychology was developed, in part, in order to help identify children who would today be classified as “special needs” students (pp. 26-27). The field began to take off in the 1920s and 1930s, expanded considerably in the 1940s and 1950s, and was profoundly influenced by the demographic “baby boom” of the 1950s and 1960s. With more children came more “special needs” children, and so the field came into its own as a means for helping to quantify their needs and how to meet them (pp. 28-29).

Ashley’s case is that of an adolescent girl in a blended family dealing with depression. Logically, a marriage and family therapist and a school psychologist both have much to offer in terms of clinical intervention. A marriage and family therapist brings to the table skills for helping families deal with their mental health and relational issues. In Ashley’s case, a marriage and family therapist could help her to identify the issues that are troubling her with respect to her new stepfather and his children (Rowatt, 2001). Adolescents often have trouble in blended families: they are unlikely to see the dyad of their parent and their step-parent as a functional one, and in Ashley’s case there is the compounding factor of her new step-siblings (pp. 80-81). Blending different households is intrinsically fraught with difficulties for children, particularly adolescents, and particularly if both partners have children: after all, different households typically have different rules, and both partners are likely to have their own rules and parenting styles (Slee, Campbell, & Spears, 2012, p. 291). A school psychologist would be good as well, because Ashley’s issues are manifesting at least in part in school, and because of the school psychologist’s training in dealing with minors in the school environment (Rowatt, 2001, pp. 80-81; Slee et al., 2012, pp. 290-292).

Collaboration and communication between the school psychologist and the marriage and family therapist would be essential—however, such efforts must also involve Ashley’s mother, her step-father, Ashley herself of course, and her step-siblings and teachers as necessary. As the leader of the team, it would be my responsibility for developing procedures for knowledge-sharing: for example, both therapists should share notes with each other, highlighting particularly relevant parts of their findings (Dougherty, 2009, p. 10; Thompson, 2002, n.p.). By communicating, they could share valuable information that casts essential light on the therapeutic process and how it is progressing. They might also try joint sessions, wherein both professionals sit down with Ashley and her mother, or the mother and the step-father. The central idea here is that both professionals could offer their specific take on the issues presenting, thereby facilitating realization of the treatment objectives. By cooperating and communicating in all stages of the knowledge-sharing process, all actors involved can facilitate success.

References

Bischoff, R. J. (2011). The state of couple therapy. In J. L. Wetchler (Ed.), Handbook of clinical issues in couple therapy (pp. 1-22) (2^nd ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Brehm, K., & Doll, B. (2009). Building resilience in schools: A focus on population-based prevention. In R. W. Christner & R. B. Mennuti (Eds.), School-based mental health: A practitioner’s guide to comparative practices (pp. 55-86). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Conyne, R. K., Horne, A. M., & Raczynski, K. (2013). Prevention in psychology: An introduction to the prevention practice kit. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Dougherty, A. M. (2009). Foundations of consultation and collaboration. In A. M. Dougherty (Ed.), Casebook of psychological consultation and collaboration in school and community settings (pp. 2-20) (5^th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Merrell, K. W., Ervin, R. A., & Peacock, G. G. (2012). School psychology for the 21^st century: Foundations and practices (2^nd ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.

Rasheed, J. M., Rasheed, M. N., & Marley, J. A. (2011). Family therapy: Models and techniques. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Rowatt, W. (2001). Adolescents in crisis: A guidebook for parents, teachers, ministers, and counselors. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Seligman, L. (2004). Diagnosis and treatment planning in counseling (3^rd ed.). New York: Springer Science + Business Media, LLC.

Slee, P. T., Campbell, M., & Spears, B. (2012). Child, adolescent, and family development (3^rd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, R. A. (2002). School counseling: Best practices for working in the schools (2^nd ed.). New York: Brunner-Routledge.

Vera, E. M., & Polanin, M. K. (2013). Prevention and counseling psychology: A simple yet difficult commitment. In E. Vera (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of prevention in counseling psychology (pp. 3-17). New York: Oxford University Press.