Counseling Psychology: Importance, History, And Specialties

Lectures or practitioner led discussions), and produce an informative blog piece on your chosen form of applied psychology. The blog post will communicate an understanding of what is involved in that role, the theoretical underpinnings, the history of the job and the applications – the psychology in practice. Please note this blog topic should be a DIFFERENT topic from your poster.

Your blog should demonstrate knowledge and critical understanding of the theoretical underpinnings, history and contemporary application of applied psychology as practised by psychologists from the major divisions of the British Psychological Society. It should demonstrate a knowledge and critical understanding of a range of relevant topics within contemporary applied psychology and should synthesise and integrate this knowledge to inform a basic understanding of the work and research conducted by applied psychologists.

To complete the blog you will need to understand your chosen topic well, through attending the lecturers and seminars (directed learning), engaging in independent reading (independent learning) and by practicing writing blogs. Tips on how to write an academic blog will be discussed in seminars and via Blackboard.

Your blog needs to discuss psychology research (both historical and contemporary). Of course, you are not being asked to outline all relevant theories to the question. It is better for the coherence of your work to outline clearly which theories you will cover, and then discuss them in detail. But make sure that all aspects of the question are answered and all learning outcomes are met. It should be written in a style that is clear and that non-psychologists can understand. It should be engaging and explain how we use psychology in the real world. Examples of blogs will be provided on Blackboard and in seminars. You will have the chance to practice writing blogs.

This module teaches you how BPS accredited psychologists apply psychology to the real world. Thisassessment aims to support your career and employability knowledge and skills. By writing a blog youcan show your ability to explain complex psychology knowledge into a format that is engaging and informative.

What is psychology and its domains?

Psychology is defined as the study of mind as well as behavior. It can be described as the study of the mind, the procedure of its working and how it is seen to affect the behaviors of individuals. Psychologists as well as psychiatrists are seen to work together helping people to overcome their mental issues but the role of the experts is not always same (Gelso et al., 2014). Similarly, there are various fields of psychology, which deals with different aspects of mental health problems, cognitive reasoning skills and many others.  There are different types of psychology domains like cognitive psychology, forensic psychology, social psychology as well as developmental psychology (Walsh, 2014). This paper would mainly be focusing on one of the domains of psychology called the cognitive psychology. A detailed description of the domain would be provided which would help the readers develop good amount of knowledge.

Counseling psychology is one of the specialties within the fields of professional psychology. It mainly helps in maintaining a focus on the on facilitation of the personal as well as the interpersonal function of the lives of individuals across the entire span of lives (Paloutzin & Park, 2014). This special domain pays important attention to various types of emotional, social, health related, educational, vocational, and organizational as well as developmental concerns.

The practice of counseling psychology is seen to encompass a wide variety of culturally sensitive practices. These practices are seen to help individuals in their improvement of their well-being at the same time of alleviating maladjustment and distress. It also helps in resolving crisis and thereby increasing the ability of the individuals so that they can function better in their lives (Tracey, 2017). This domain of psychology not only pays importance to the normal developmental issues as well as problems associated intricately with the emotional, physical as well as mental disorders, this specialty domain also holds unique perspective in the broader practice-based areas of psychology.

History of counseling psychology:

Counseling psychology has emerged as one of the applied specialty with the American Psychological Association (APA) in the 1940. This specialty was recognized in the APA since the year 1946. This recognition was then reaffirmed in the year 1988. This happened during the time when the APA had taken an initiative in the form of a new period of application in the field of  specialty recognition (Hill et al., 2015). One of the landmarks that have been stated by the researchers in the long period of  history of the domain of counseling psychology is seen to be including the establishment of the particular discipline in relation to the overall various types of professions of psychology, different conferences held over the years and even the creation of key professional journals. Two organizations are considered to have contributed in enormous manner to the development of the domain of the counseling psychology. These are the Council of the counseling Psychology Training Programs called the CCTCP which is the organization of the directors for training programs in counseling psychology. Another is the Society of counseling psychology (SCP) of the APA (Chan et al., 2015).

What is counseling psychology and how it helps?

John Whitely is one of the most important historians of the counseling psychology. He has great contribution in identifying one of the most important as well as the distant seeds of the field of the counseling psychology. This was found to be helpful  not only in cases of vocational guidance, different mental hygiene as well as in psychometrics but also in individual differences movements that came along the emergence of different non-medical as well as non-psychoanalytic kinds of counseling information. One of the examples noted was the person0centered therapy of Carl Roger (Ang et al., 2015). In course of time, the growth of the counseling psychology took place mainly due to the demand for the psychological services that are created by the veterans who were retreating from the Second World War. Negotiations took place among a large number of representatives which included the  APA’s divisions 17(called Counseling and Guidance), Veterans Administration’s Central Office Staff in Clinical Psychology and APA’s divisions 12 (Clinical Psychology). This helped in growth of the new position for such psychologist in the VA system called the “Counseling Psychologist (Vocational)”.  This took place in the year 1952, which aided the veterans to get back and readjust themselves in the civilian life (Bingham, 2015). The veterans required different types of knowledge as well as skills for gaining employment as well as educational opportunities rather than their neurological injuries as well as addressing psychopathologies.  Therefore, this position helped the counseling psychology to be gradually differentiated from psychiatry as well as clinical psychology. This resulted in growth of the vocational guidance movement.

Counseling psychologists mainly help by serving clients of all ages coming from different backgrounds not only individually but also in different group settings. These specialists are mainly seen to conduct proper evaluation of the current situations s well as the problems they have in their professional as well as personal lives. They are not mainly seen to work with clients who are going through severe mental health programs (Xu & Tracey, 2017). They are mostly seen to handle clients who mainly come to discuss various types of relationships, career as well as substance abuse and other problems thereby offering them advice. They are seen to consult regularly with different organizations who seek to consult regularly with the organizations and thereby seek to enhance the effectiveness as well as the well-being of their members. The different types of interventions that are used extensively by the counseling psychologists may be both long term as well as short or brief (Coutinho et al., 2014). The interventions as well as the approach of the counseling psychologists are goal-oriented as well as problem specific. They mainly follow a principle philosophy that focuses on valuing individual differences as well as diversity and providing significance on prevention, development as well as adjustment across the entire life spans.

History of counseling psychology

Modern life of individuals in the present generation is indeed very stressful. Most of the individuals are seen to struggle with their daily life problems and try their best to cope with stress, career problems, anxiety, depression, different types of relationship status and many others. These require the individuals to seek for services for counseling psychologists. The experts take the responsibilities of meeting such people and thereby helping them to cope with problems during various stages of lives. Therefore, the activities which are seen to be taken by the counseling psychologists is to listen to the patient’s concerns and thereby instructing them on techniques which they can utilize for solving various problems (Norcross & Sayette, 2016). They also help the clients in proper management of the stresses, adjusting to different life changes, living normal lives and thereby improving relationships. However, before suggesting techniques, the counselors make sure that they conduct effective evaluations by administering various types of tests and asking different types of questions. The period of treatment may extend from just a few months to that for many years. Counseling psychologists are seen to implement new concepts that they develop from recent researches into different patient treatments. Besides, caring for patients, the experts are also seen to be highly interested in recognizing as well as preventing major social, mental and physical disorders just before the time when it becomes unmanageable (Cormier & Hackey, 2015). Some of the arenas where the experts are seen to base their focus are the following:

• Proper ways of coping with the normal stress of life rather than providing severe mental health problems
• Provide importance on the functioning as well as the consciousness of the situations
• Develop an understanding of the current life experiences of the client and the past ones
• Also, emphasize in the different forms of role functioning as well as accountability.
• Recommend behavior modification strategies to help people make life changes (Cormier & Hackney, 2015).

Differences between counseling psychology and clinical psychology:

Both the counseling as well as clinical psychologists undergoes different types of training and hence they are seen to address different client problems. Counseling psychologists are actually seen to meet with patients typically who are struggling to cope with different stresses of everyday life. On the other hand, clinical psychologists are seen to mainly work with different patients who are diagnosed with more severe psychological disorders like in cases of bipolar disorders as well as schizophrenia (Heesacker, 2018). Therefore, counseling psychologists are mainly seen to teach people about how to manage stress properly but on the other hand, clinical psychologists are mainly seen to specialize in diseases treatments.

Education as well training which are important for counseling psychology:

Those individuals who want to develop a career in psychology can earn a master’s degree or a PhD in counseling psychology. The individuals after achieving the degrees need to work under the supervision of the psychologists who is already holding a doctorate degree. However, it is seen that those individuals who earn PhD typically acquires more expertise that is clinical and therefore they can prepare themselves in better ways for the private practices.

What do counseling psychologists do?

Specialized knowledge that experts need in the topic:

Counseling psychology requires the experts to have a wide range of knowledge across all stages of development like childhood that is then followed by adolescence, adult age as well as older age. However, the experts also need to develop specialized knowledge that should focus mainly on

• healthy aspects as well as strengths of the clients whether the clients been seen as individuals, families, couples, groups and also organizations
• different types of environmental as well as situational influences like the ways how cultural, gender as well as lifestyle issues are resulting in changing the shape of the people, their experiences as well as concerns (Philips et al., 2017)
• different types of issues that comes with diversity as well as social justice
• it also analyses the role of the career as well as the work in the lives of the people

Types of problems that are mainly addressed in the counseling psychologists:

• School as well career and different work related adjustment concerns
• Difficulty in making decisions about work as well as career and also problems that include inefficient dealing with the school-profession-retirement transitions in lives
• Different types of marital as well as family difficulties and different types of relationship issues and difficulties.
• Deficits of skill and learning which are experienced by clients
• Management of stress as well as coping with different negative events of life
• Problems regarding their organizations
• Helps individuals to deal with as well as adjusting to different physical disabilities, injury as well as diseases
• Also helps in social as well as personal adjustment of clients
• Development of the identity of the individuals (Martens et al., 2016)
• Also includes persistent difficulties that can be related with different people in the general.

A large number of procedures as well as techniques are used by counseling psychologists, which include the following:

• Group, family as well as individual counseling
• Trauma as well as disaster management and also crisis intervention
• Proper assessment techniques are undertaken for the proper diagnosis of the various types of psychological disorders.
• Also conducting of the programs as well as the workshops which are useful in educating and informing people about different mental health, family, schools, relationship as well as workshop issues (this helps in preventing problems before they start or help in reducing the problems before they get worse.
• Proper consultation with the organizations
• Evaluation of the programs as well as the outcomes of the treatment like that of the client progress
• Proper training
• Clinical supervision
• Proper knowledge about test construction as well as validation (Ang et al., 2015)
• Proper conducting and reading of the research methodologies for different types of scientific investigations

Conclusion:

Therefore form the above discussion; it becomes quite clear that counseling psychology is a kind of applied psychology. Experts mainly use this to help people develop control over their feelings and lead better quality lives by proper management of stress and choosing the right pathway for personal and professional issues in lives. The experts mainly focus on treating individuals with a variety of different types of emotional, behavioral as well as social disorders and problems. Although people are seen to confuse between two branches of clinical psychology and counseling psychology, this blog would be useful to help them overcome the confusions and follow proper ways of treatment and guidance.

References:

Ang, S., & Van Dyne, L. (2015). Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge.

Bingham, R. P. (2015). The role of university and college counseling centers in advancing the professionalization of psychology. American Psychologist, 70(8), 792.

Chan, A. W., Yeh, C. J., & Krumboltz, J. D. (2015). Mentoring ethnic minority counseling and clinical psychology students: A multicultural, ecological, and relational model. Journal of counseling psychology, 62(4), 592.

Cormier, S., & Hackney, H. L. (2015). Counseling Strategies and Interventions for Professional Helpers. Pearson Higher Ed.

Coutinho, J. F., Silva, P. O., & Decety, J. (2014). Neurosciences, empathy, and healthy interpersonal relationships: Recent findings and implications for counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(4), 541.

Gelso, C. J., Nutt Williams, E., & Fretz, B. R. (2014). Counseling psychology. American Psychological Association.

Heesacker, M. (2018). Presidential Address: Counseling Psychology in the Trump Era. The Counseling Psychologist, 46(1), 77-86.

Hill, C. E., Baumann, E., Shafran, N., Gupta, S., Morrison, A., Rojas, A. E. P., ... & Gelso, C. J. (2015). Is training effective? A study of counseling psychology doctoral trainees in a psychodynamic/interpersonal training clinic. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 62(2), 184.

Martens, M. P., Herman, K. C., Takamatsu, S. K., Schmidt, L. R., Herring, T. E., Labuschagne, Z., & McAfee, N. W. (2016). An update on the status of sponsored research in counseling psychology. The Counseling Psychologist, 44(4), 450-478.

Norcross, J. C., & Sayette, M. A. (2016). Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology: 2016/2017 Edition. Guilford Publications.

Paloutzian, R. F., & Park, C. L. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality. Guilford Publications.

Phillips, J. C., Hargons, C., Chung, Y. B., Forrest, L., Hahn Oh, K., & Westefeld, J. (2017). Society of Counseling Psychology Leadership Academy: Cultivating leadership competence and community. The Counseling Psychologist, 45(7), 965-991.

Sayette, M. A., & Norcross, J. C. (2018). Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology: 2018/2019 Edition. Guilford Publications.

Tracey, T. J. (2017). The scientific future of counseling psychology: Five specific areas of predictions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(4), 347.

Walsh, W. B. (Ed.). (2014). Counseling psychology and optimal human functioning. Routledge.

Xu, H., & Tracey, T. J. (2017). Use of Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis in Examining Measurement Invariance in Counseling Psychology Research. The European Journal of Counselling Psychology, 6(1).