Past, Present, and Future of Counseling

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Institution

Past, Present, and Future of Counseling

Counseling is a profession that has undergone change over time based on the needs and other changes in technology and ideas. Since the time of Clifford Whittingham, there have been lots of changes in the mental health counseling that if the author would rise now, he would be shocked. The future also seems bright due to technological advancements in all fields of life.

Present

Counseling is a practice that involves either general practice counselors or health service professionals who specialize in psychology. Counseling involves the functioning of people personally as well as in their associations with other people at their different ages. Therefore counseling seeks to solve social, emotional, physical health issues and work-related problems among other concerns that people face at different stages of their lives (NIMH, 2017). Counseling helps people solve their problems as individuals or in groups such as in the case of family therapy. The role of counselors is usually to provide clients who face mental health issues with a better feeling of well-being and alleviate the distress that they may feel due to the crisis. Counseling may also involve the provision of diagnosis, assessment and the treatment of severe psychological symptoms such as clinical depression.

Counseling is a helping profession like medicine and ministry among others. However, counseling differs from the other professions in the same group based on the application of the different sources of knowledge. Counseling is a profession in which the practitioners apply knowledge from different fields such as medicine, psychology, and sociology. Counselors have to rely on theories from psychology to understand some phenomena such as the impact of the social factors like employment on the mental health of people (NIMH, 2017). Medicine is applied to understand the functioning of the brain and also the clinical treatment that can be used to solve issues that may not be solved via psychotherapy and counseling.

Counseling draws from various sources of philosophy. The modes of treatment are also based on various philosophies and theories. However, the most important aspects of counseling are that it should be based on ethical practice (Parry, 2010). Therefore, there should be no harm to the clients. Also, beneficence is an important principle that should always be applied. Counselors should always endeavor to benefit and not to harm their clients. Also, they should seek consent from the guardians of patients before offering different forms of treatment.

Past

Counseling has come from far to reach its current place in medicine and mental health. Clifford Whittingham Beers is one of the people that lived at a time when counseling was still in its primitive stages that can attest to the fact. Clifford Whittingham Beers was not a professional in the field of counseling. Instead, he was a client. Clifford Whittingham Beers was a successful businessman who graduated in Yale and started facing mental health issues soon after his higher education. He attempted suicide and was admitted to a mental health facility in Connecticut. He was admitted to both a private and a state-owned facility for mentally ill patients. However, rather than experience recovery, he experienced gross maltreatment that inspired him to write a book to push for changes in the mental health sector. Professionals in the health sector supported the views of Clifford Whittingham Beers at the time, and therefore he had a lot of influence in the field of mental health counseling. He wrote the book titled A Mind That Found Itself (Parry, 2010). In the book, he detailed his autobiography especially in the mental health institutions and the suffering that patients experienced firsthand. The experiences of Whitland and his participation in the creation of bodies like Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene led to changes that are now evident in mental health institutions. If Clifford Whittingham came back now, he would be completely surprised at the changes in the way people are treated.

Future

One of the most interesting aspects of the future of mental health is the use of technology such as applications in the treatment of mental health issues. There are several ways that applications that run on smartphones may be used. One of the ways is by using the apps as reminders for various functions such as taking medication. Apps may also be used to communicate with counselors by feeding information into the application software and the counselors responding through the messaging system of the apps. The apps will have several advantages in mental health counseling. First, they increase convenience. People will be able to perform various issues such as know when to take their drugs without having to be reminded by the counselor (Parry, 2010). The apps will also save the costs of mental health as people will save both time and money that they would have used to visit counselors for reasons that can be solved without the presence of the counselor. As a counselor, the apps will help increase the efficiency of work. For instance, counselors may perform scheduling using the apps and have reminders of the clients and prepare for them adequately.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the counseling profession is always changing. The changes have led to shifts in the practice from the primitive form that once characterized mental health to the more specialized techniques and technology in practice. The future of the profession is bright as changes in the different fields of technology will improve the delivery and the consumption of services. Applications are an example of technologies that will change counseling and revolutionize the profession. Therefore counselors should prepare and accept the changes as they come.

References

NIMH. (2017). Technology and the Future of Mental Health Treatment. Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/technology-and-the-future-of-mental-health-treatment/index.shtml

Parry, M. (2010). From a patient’s perspective: Clifford Whittingham Beers’ work to reform mental health services. American journal of public health, 100(12), 2356.