Mental Health Counseling: Identity and Distinctiveness - Paper Example

The human service provider field includes a complex and bewildering array of overlapping and other related issues but separate professions that include mental health counseling, the psychology, the social work, marriage and family counseling, professional the counseling and psychiatry. By combining items together, this paper tries to convey to the readers the uniqueness of one of the most recent service provider professions, mental health counseling (MHC)

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Historical Tradition

Mental health counseling has a brief but bold past. Historically, economically and socially, the context of following the world war II. Non-medical, behavioral, and cognitive approaches to psychotherapy flourished, with some of the growth being stimulated by the community mental health centers. Many of these practitioners are trained in colleges of education and secured employment under a variety professional title in the community settings like the hospitals and the private practice. The pioneering founders of the profession drawn the newly established identity of MHC (mental health counselor), this is because they trusted or believed in the power of counseling (Palmo, 1999). This began the political process of differentiating their activities, roles, and identity from other service provider professions so that the uniqueness of their business was revealed to both themselves and others.

Identity

Identity is the aggregate of the specific educational, scientific and professional contributions of the disciplines of education, psychology and also counseling (Sprill et al., 1990). When talking about the identity themes, MHC has discovered itself as a profession in which an individual is taken both developmentally with attention to the contextual influences on person lives (Hershenson, 1987). This approach includes both systemic and personal perspectives. On the other hand, from the systems perspective, clients are embedded within and influenced by their family, societal, historical and socioeconomic context, which means that the community resources and interdisciplinary approaches can be useful in treatment.

Distinctiveness

As a masters level, primarily practice an oriented profession, MHC has distinguishing characteristics regarding what it excludes and also includes. Most naturally, MCH professional training builds on the theory and research of the behavioral sciences, but the education is not unique to the disciplines of social work, psychology or medicine. On the other hand, there are specified standards for MHC training with credentials available from the Council accreditation of counseling and related learning or educational programs, if programs qualify by meeting the standards which are usually 60.

Conclusion

MHC is a service provider professionals formed to seek visibility and recognition basing on the behavior sciences and trained to focus on strengths and development.

References

Spruill, D. A., & Fong, M. L. (1990). Defining the domain of mental health counseling: From identity confusion to consensus. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 12, 12-23.

Hershenson, D. B., & Power, P. W. (1987). Mental health counseling: Theory & practice. New York: Pergamon Press.

Palmo, A. J. (1999). The MHC child reaches maturity: Does the child seem short for its age? Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 21, 215-228.

Pistole, M. C., & Roberts, A. (in press). Mental health counseling: Toward resolving identity confusions. Journal of Mental Health Counseling.