Mental Health Counseling

In the past years, the mental health counseling profession has shifted its focus to disasters and trauma-causing events. The disasters in question may be either man-made or natural disasters. Man made disasters may include shootings that occur in the neighborhoods where people live. Natural disasters, on the other hand, deal with events that are caused by physical features and are not affected by the activities of the people in that area. This change in focus arose due to the increasing occurrences of these events and disasters. Affected people have also increased significantly in the past years. For this reason, the Mental Health Counseling profession has decided to focus on this field (Shallcross, 2012).

Prior to this decision, most trained counselors treated trauma victims just like other clients. For this reason, they simply provided therapy to these individuals. The provision of therapy was not effective since the traumatized victims require a lot more care to get better. The inception of programs that train the counselors in trauma management and counseling has been formulated in order to offer the required help to these victims. The numbers of natural disasters like hurricanes that have affected the United States in the past ten years have increased dramatically (Whitla, 2003). For this reason, this training program is appropriate for the counselors in America. The focus of these counselors is the use of the community that has been affected to restore normalcy in the areas affected, for instance the areas affected by earthquakes. The members of the community are taught how to support each other in order to ensure that they return to the state they all were before the disaster occurred.

In addition to this, the community becomes even more united such that, in the case of another event, they will know what to do. Another reason why the counselors decided to focus on this field is to reduce the number of people suffering from depression because of the traumatic events they have encountered in the past. After several studies were conducted, it was noted that several people suffering from depression have encountered at least one traumatic event in the course of their lives (Afuape, 2011). The event in question was not addressed appropriately, and this caused them to fall into depression. In a bid to reduce this number, they decided to address the matter before it resulted into depression, which is much more complicated to treat.

The focus on traumatic events and disasters has several implications to members in this field and to clients in need of the services, in question. The implications the decision will have are mostly positive rather than negative. The first implication expected is that more people who have undergone trauma will obtain treatment more easily. In the past, the number of counselors who specialized in this treatment was few. For this reason, the patients who could get access to them for treatment were significantly few. However, with the inception of the new training programs, the available counselors have increased. Subsequently, the patients are able to get the required treatment more easily and in time. Failure to acquire the treatment may result in unwanted conditions like depression.

Depression will take a longer time to treat and will be more expensive, as well. In addition to this, depression is accompanied by some characteristics like suicidal tendencies. This increase the danger attributed to depression. However, by obtaining the correct treatment in time avoids all the complications that may arise afterwards. One negative effect that may come out of this decision is that all the efforts of the counselors will be directed towards one direction. Other aspects of the career may be forgotten because of this since several people will opt to be trained in this field. This will have a significant effect on patients with different conditions. The focus of the counselors in traumatic events will have a great impact on the victims of these occurrences,

References

Afuape, T. (2011). Power, resistance and liberation in therapy with survivors of trauma: To have our hearts broken. Hove, East Sussex: Routledge.

Shallcross, Lynne. (2012, Feb). A Calming Presence. Counseling Today. Retrieved from: http://ct.counseling.org/2012/02/a-calming-presence/

Whitla, M. (2003). Crisis management and the school community. Melbourne, Victoria: ACER Press.