Chapter 9 - Counselling

• Brief counselling approaches


  Skills applicable for counselling settings where counsellors are expected to do more in less time (e.g. managed care settings, schools, public settings)
• Brief counselling theories


  • Solution-focused counselling
  • Narrative counselling
• Solution-focused counselling


  • Sees people as being constructivist in nature - reality is a reflection of observation and experience
  • People want to change and change is inevitable
• 3 categories of clients in solution-focused counselling


  • Visitors
  • Complainants
  • Customers
• Narrative counselling


  • Founders include Michael White and David Epston with contributions from Michael Durrant and Gerald Monk
  • Meaning or knowledge is constructed through social interaction
  • "The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem"
• Crisis


  A perception or experiencing of an event or situation as an intolerable difficulty that exceeds the person's current resources and coping mechanisms
• Crisis counselling


  The employment of a variety of direct and action-oriented approaches to help individuals find resources within themselves and/or deal externally with crisis
• Trauma


  An exposure to an event in which a person is confronted with actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to self or others' physical well-being
• Definitions of trauma


  • Hearing about trauma
  • Direct exposure to the aftereffects of trauma
  • Indirect exposure to the effects of trauma
  • Observation at a safe distance from the trauma
• Trauma counselling


  People participate in when they have perceived a threat to their life
• Crisis and trauma counselling

  • Founders and developers: Erich Lindemann and Gerald Caplan
  • View of Human Nature: Loss is inevitable to life
• Types of loss


  • Developmental
  • Situational
  • Existential
  • Ecosystemic
• Roles of a counsellor in solution-focused counselling

  • Determine - active
  • Facilitate - resources
  • Encourage - expectation
  • Work towards - solution