User:Jacob k 2022/Counseling psychology

Employment and salary[edit]

Counseling psychologists are employed in a variety of settings depending on the services they provide and the client populations they serve. Some are employed in colleges and universities as teachers, supervisors, researchers, and service providers. Others are employed in independent practice providing counseling, psychotherapy, assessment, and consultation services to individuals, couples/families, groups, and organizations. Additional settings in which counseling psychologists practice include community mental health centers, Veterans Administration medical centers and other facilities, family services, health maintenance organizations, rehabilitation agencies, business and industrial organizations and consulting within firms.

The amount of training required for psychologists differs based on the country in which they are practicing. Typically, a psychologist completes an Undergraduate Degree followed by 5–6 years of further study and/or training, leading to the Ph.D. While both psychologists and psychiatrists offer to counsel, psychiatrists must possess a medical degree and thus can prescribe medication while psychologists cannot.

Currently in 2022, the median salary for counseling psychologists in the United States is $86,938.

Counseling Ethics and Regulations

Perceptions on ethical behaviors vary depending upon geographical location, but ethical mandates are similar throughout the global community. Ethical standards are created to help practitioners, clients and the community avoid any possible harm or potential for harm. The standard ethical behaviors are centered on "doing no harm" and preventing harm. An excellent guideline to follow is the Ethics Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct . This code lists out the expectations psychologists must meet and thoroughly clarifies portions of the code. Some examples from the code would be respecting clients' rights, ensuring proper professional competence, ensuring the client's welfare, and giving informed consent to name a few items from the code. Several states require counselors to follow a specific Code of Ethics which was revised and updated in 2014. Failure to follow this code can lead to license revocation or more severe consequences. One of the major reason for the Code of Conduct is to better protect and serve the client and the counselor.

Counselors must review with their clients verbally and in writing the responsibilities and rights that the counselor and client have. On top of this, counselors must explain the purpose, goals, techniques, procedures, limitations, potential risks, benefits of service: the counselor's qualifications, credentials, relevant experience, approach to counseling; continuation of service upon the death of counselor; the role of technology; and other pertinent information.

Counselors cannot share any confidential information obtained through the counseling process without specific written consent by the client or legal guardian except to prevent clear, imminent danger to the client or others or when required to do so by a court order. Insurance companies or government programs will also be notified of certain information about your diagnosis and treatment to determine if your care is covered. Those companies and government programs are bound by HIPAA to keep that information strictly confidential.

Counselors are held to a higher standard than most professionals because of the intimacy of their therapeutic delivery. Therefore, counselors are not only to avoid fraternizing with their clients. In addition, they should avoid dual relationships, and never engage in sexual relationships. While explicit/detrimental relationships must be avoided, the counselor should understand what is currently going on and how their patient reacts to the counseling sessions. Counselors are also prohibited from counseling their friends and family members to ensure they remain objective. They are also prohibited from engaging in an online relationship, such as a relationship over social media with a client.

The National Board for Certified Counselors states that counselors "shall discuss important considerations to avoid exploitation before entering into a non-counseling relationship with a former client. Important considerations to be discussed include amount of time since counseling service termination, duration of counseling, nature and circumstances of client's counseling, the likelihood that the client will want to resume counseling at some time in the future; circumstances of service termination and possible negative effects or outcomes."

Counselors walk a fine line in regards to gifts. Counselors are generally discouraged from accepting gifts, favors, or trade for therapy. While the idea of a gift seems innocent to others, it can have long-lasting consequences for a counselor. In some communities, it may be avoidable given the economic standing of that community. However, individuals may feel personally rejected. In some cases if an offering is something such as a "cookie" or some form of small token gesture like a drawing from a child, it may be acceptable to receive the gesture. As counselors, a judgment call must be made, but in most cases, avoiding gifts, favors, and trade can be maintained.

There are specific examinations all counselors must pass to practice their craft successfully. These examinations are the National Counselor Examination (NCE), National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination (NCMHCE), Certified Rehabilitation Counselor Examination (CRCE), Examination of Clinical Counselor Practice (ECCP). Of the exams listed, certain ones must be passed in certain specialties; however, the most common exam utilized is the NCE.

Vocational development and career counseling[edit]

Vocational theories

Career development theories propose vocational models that include changes throughout the lifespan. Donald Super's model proposes a lifelong five-stage career development process. The stages are growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement. Throughout life, people have many roles that may differ in terms of importance and meaning. Super also theorized that career development is an implementation of self-concept. Linda Gottfredson also proposed a cognitive career decision-making process that develops through the lifespan. The initial stage of career development is hypothesized to be the development of self-image in childhood, as the range of possible roles narrows using criteria such as sex-type, social class, and prestige. During and after adolescence, people take abstract concepts into consideration, such as interests.

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Career counseling

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The goal of Career Counseling is to help guide all stages of a person's career trajectory. In addition, career Counseling looks to help individuals understand themselves and the ongoing world around them to make an informed decision regarding their life and career. Career counselors provide a wide array of services, such as attempting to help individuals discover themselves. Counselors also attempt to help others discover their actual goals or achievements they may want to complete in life regarding education, career, or their life in general. While also helping individuals figure out what they may want to become, career counselors also help find resources and information that may be useful to people in achieving their future goals. Career counselors will create a roadmap of sorts to help individuals visualize where they are along in their journey of achieving their dreams. One factor that counselors deal with is people tend to think unemployment can be permanent; however, counselors must make sure that unemployment is only temporary and their status will eventually change. So counselors must do their best to give positive reinforcement to focus more on finding their path in life. Career counseling may include provision of occupational information, modeling skills, written exercises, and exploration of career goals and plans. Career counseling can also involve the use of personality or career interest assessments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological type, or the Strong Interest Inventory, which makes use of Holland's theory. Assessments of skills, abilities, and values are also commonly assessed in career counseling. Career counselors have the flexibility to decide whether to conduct sessions using a group setting or single face-to-face in person or online setting. Currently, there is no internationally accepted standard to become a qualified career counselor; qualifications and certification will vary depending on local, state, and internal regulations.

Effects of COVID in relation to counseling

The ongoing pandemic has caused career counselors to adjust many of their current plans with their clients. While also helping to improve their abilities by facing new and different situations. The pandemic, in the beginning, caused a significant job layoff, which messed up a lot of people's career plans. Towards the beginning of 2020, employment lost around 22.4 million individuals, a downturn of around 15%. Another critical factor regarding the pandemic is that many schools shut down for a while, negatively impacting students. One such scenario is students looking for specific programs to start their masters may not have been able to with the educational shut down, which could have negatively impacted their future career path. After education started to come back online, counselors soon ran into an issue. They had to become more tech-savvy and understand how to work digitally significantly faster to help clients since the shift to an online platform.While moving to a more online counseling presence can be tricky, it will lead to more positives overall. One major positive being the flexibility with obtaining the counseling has become significantly better.However, while moving a portion to online telehealth, there are still cases that are better suited to in-person like addictions. There was an almost doubling of referrals regarding seeing a psychologist around 2020, 62%. When looking at psychologists, 7 out of 10 had their waitlist grow more extended, about 68%. Another factor to consider is the effect Covid has played on the counselor's health. Seeing how the pandemic has affected their patients why could it not affect the counselors if not be more sever, since they are dedicating more time to helping others instead of themselves. It has been noted that Counselors could be feeling overwhelmed, which can lead to many negative consequences. Hopefully, through research and information based upon prior crises, they can stay informed to take better care of themselves while helping others.

Links to other articles added

Career Counseling

Covid

National Counselor Examination

National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination

psychologists

psychiatrists

Linda Gottfredson

Summary
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JasmineG17

-I found some numbers talking about Covid relation to jobs which I added after reading your article. I also added some information in the Covid section talking about the increase in people visiting a psychologist in 2020 and how big of an increase it was. However I do not believe I will add any pictures, The main reason being I think it will not mesh well with the topic.

Irvingca

-After considering the placement of the sentence you mentioned I finally agreed and changed its location. As for the last 2 sentences of the Covid section before my changing I can understand where you are coming from by saying its presumptive. I found a source and made a correction to this portion. When considering adding more sources throughout the article I feel that I need more time to think about this however in regards to this point in time I believe I have added all necessary sources and am not including to much "Fluff".

Ccurry24

-I went through the article and looked for grammatical mistakes and spacing issues and I fixed a few areas that I saw however as you said it will take more time to look into so I can double check and make sure. As for the pictures I do not believe it will mesh well with the content so I do not have any plans on adding them in.

Mcaro99

- I appreciate you taking time to look through my article!

Lindseyfturner106

- I added a little more into the code and ethics sections however I do believe it outlines the major outline for the code and is quite descriptive already. In regards to the fluff I tried to condense my paragraph better so I hope it looks better.

Seganey

- With regards to using more sources from the current article, I do not feel that many of them could be used for the additions I made. The current sources seem to be from actual studies and books mostly. While a lot of the sources I have gotten information from are the actual organizations who are putting the information into practice and talking about what they have seen or experienced. I have tried to go back through Grammarly and made some corrections. I have also taken a look at your link and may add information from it.