Briefly summarize the guidelines to guide counselors for building ...

[Jipu 123]

Briefly summarize the guidelines to guide counselors for building a relationship with a client during counselling.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Write a short note on the role of social workers in the mental health field.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[abro1885]

Answer to Question 1

The following are guidelines for building a relationship with a client:
1. Seek to establish a nonthreatening atmosphere in which the counselee feels safe to communicate fully his or her troubles while feeling accepted as a person.

2. In initial contacts with the counselee, a counselor needs to sell herself or himself-not arrogantly, but as a knowledgeable, understanding person who may be able to help and who wants to try.

3. A counselor need to stay calm. A counselor should not laugh or express shock when the counselee begins to open up about problems. Emotional outbursts, even if subtle, will lead the counselee to believe that a counselor is not going to understand his or her difficulties, and he or she will usually stop discussing them.

4. Generally a counselor should be nonjudgmental and nonmoralistic. One should show respect for the counselee's values, and not try to sell his or her values. The values that work for one may not be best for someone else in a different situation.

5. A counselor should view the counselee as an equal. Rookie counselors sometimes make the mistake of thinking that, because someone is sharing intimate secrets, the counselor must be very important; they then end up creating a superior/inferior relationship. If counselees feel that they are being treated as inferior, they will be less motivated to reveal and discuss personal difficulties.

6. Use of shared vocabulary. This does not mean using the same slang words or the same accent as the counselee. If the counselee sees a counselor's speech as artificial, it may seriously offend him or her. One should use words that the counselee understands and that are not offensive.

7. The tone of a counselor's voice should convey the message that he or she empathetically understands and cares about the counselee's feelings.

8. Keeping confidential what the counselee has said. People by nature have urges to share juicy secrets with someone else. But, if the counselee discovers that confidentiality has been violated, a working relationship may be quickly destroyed.

9. If one is counseling a relative or a friend, there is a danger that, because one is emotionally involved, he or she may get upset or into an argument with the other person. If that happens, it is almost always best to drop the subject immediately, as tactfully as possible. Perhaps, after tempers cool, the subject can be brought up again. Or it may be best to refer the counselee to someone else. Many professionals refuse to counsel friends or relatives because emotional involvement interferes with the calm, detached perspective that is needed to help clients explore problems and alternative solutions.



Answer to Question 2


Social workers were first employed in the mental health field in 1906 to take social histories of newly admitted patients to Manhattan State Hospital in New York City. Since then they have been involved in providing a variety of preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services. Over the years, there has been a shift in emphasis from treating the individual to treating the family. Social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists now function interchangeably as individual, family, and group therapists. All three professional groups are also involved in designing and administering mental health programs. Other professionals involved in working as a team in mental health facilities include psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, and recreational therapists. The number of social workers providing mental health services in the United States is larger than the number of psychiatrists or clinical psychologists providing such services. Many social agencies, in addition to community mental health centers, provide counseling and psychotherapy to people with emotional problems. Such agencies include schools, family counseling agencies, social service departments, hospitals, adoption agencies, and probation and parole departments. An increasing number of clinical social workers are opening private practices to provide individual, family, and group therapy for a variety of emotional problems. Increasingly, payments from public and private insurance programs reimburse social workers for providing therapy on a private basis. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) has been promoting state licensing (or registration) requirements to assure the public that social work practitioners, especially those in private practice, meet high standards of competency. All states have now enacted legislation to license social workers. The NASW has also established a national Register of Clinical Social Workers. At one time, the social work role in the mental health field was generally considered subordinate to psychiatry. But with a growing recognition that emotional problems are primarily problems in living rather than organic in nature, social workers are increasingly employed in agencies to provide counseling and psychotherapy without supervision by a psychiatrist.