This award honors doctoral students with exceptional insight and understanding of the consulting profession and the work of professional advisors in the areas of mental health, private practice, community agency, agency, organization or related advisory institutions.
Winner: Adriana Walsh
Adriana Walsh is a master student in the clinical mental health counseling program at Wake Forest University. Before moving to North Carolina graduate school, Adriana worked in her native Maine as a full-time crisis and supporter for the nationwide sexual abuse hotline. Although she is just beginning to explore her clinical populations of interest, she hopes to help people with issues such as anxiety, grief and loss, trauma, chronic pain and illness, identity problems, and life transitions. Adriana is drawn to existential, narrative and relational-cultural approaches and hopes to incorporate elements of expression and ecotherapy in her work with clients. She has a bachelor's degree in music from Grinnell College. In her free time, Adriana likes to cook, travel, take long walks in nature, play and write music and spend time with the family.
Article:
To fully engage in the profession of counseling means to understand counseling as both an art and a science. While the “art” of advice is intuitive to many, its scientific quality may seem elusive. However, as set out in the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics, measurement of therapeutic effectiveness is necessary to ensure that customers' time, energy and money are not wasted on treatment that is ineffective at best and harmful at worst. As a first-year counseling student, I am faced with a delicate riddle: How can counselors engage in the crucial science of measuring therapeutic outcomes without forgetting the basic humanity on which effective therapy depends?
Fortunately, the measurement of results does not require that the human quality of therapy be abandoned, but actually depends entirely on it. Take, for example, María, a recent immigrant from Mexico. She is in an abusive relationship and presents herself with debilitating social fear. How could effective counseling for María look like? Does that mean gaining the courage to leave your partner? Does that mean tackling your fear enough to leave your home and buy groceries? Or does it mean something completely different?
In truth, most of the answers to these questions must come from María herself. While clinicians rely on their own expertise based on empirical research, the integration of customer feedback is the cornerstone of effective advice. However, traditional means of gathering feedback (e.g., a conversation or post-meeting survey) may not always provide accurate assessments of customer results, and the feedback process should be tailored to each customer. For example, Maria's social fear can make honest personal feedback difficult. She can also withhold criticism because she is not used to the fact that her voice is privileged in relationships. Linguistic and cultural differences must be taken into account, since they too can prevent open and clear communication of feedback.
Consultants can minimize such obstacles by cultivating a "culture of feedback" in which regular customer input is normalized and encouraged. To this end, advisors should provide options such as giving customers feedback (e.g. verbally or in writing), using a language that resonates with and empowers customers (e.g. avoid psychological terminology), and early and often opportunities provide for feedback.
In addition, counselors must be willing to address potential blind spots, reconcile our clinical expertise with an attitude of humility, and proactively seek peer and supervisory input. We need to be aware of the structural forces that jeopardize our ability to objectively evaluate advice outcomes, such as: B. Insurance policies that evaluate certain approaches remain critically aware. It is important that we recognize the pressure and resist reshaping our evaluations of the results into certain forms when other approaches are more suitable for a particular customer.
Counselors must strive for long-term effectiveness by fighting oppressive conditions that hinder the search for or continuation of therapy, including discrimination, poverty, insurance costs and stigma. Finally, adopting an attitude as a "scientist-practitioner" (e.g. through action research) can give clinicians the opportunity to view the analysis of results not as the sole responsibility of the ivory tower academics, but as an integral part of any effective advice.
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