CS Features – Expert Interviews, Guides, Professional Advocacy & Research in Counseling

Somatic therapy focuses on the client’s physical experience by identifying how their body stores and releases stress. For many, this approach is quite intuitive, yet some anxious clients may initially struggle. Stressed out, over-caffeinated, and bouncing between past regrets and existential crises, they may have spent many years bypassing the discomfort in their bodies, doing mental gymnastics to stay cerebral.

Counselors who are new in the profession may take therapeutic failure personally when it may reflect other relationship dynamics. Therapy does not work for many reasons, including a mismatch in personality, client readiness for treatment, financial issues, or cultural misunderstandings.

Over the past few years, teens have experienced an alarming increase in mental illness in the U.S. The 2010s, in particular, marked a decade of declining mental health capped off by the disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. By 2024, national survey data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that around one in every five adolescents suffered from a major depressive episode in the previous year, continuing an upward trend in depression that began around 2013.

The root Latin manipulus means handful, as in a skillful handling of objects. A juggler, a card shuffler, and a bored student spinning their pencil in class are all manipulating objects. Applying this skillful handling to people, it’s no wonder we feel played with when we’re socially manipulated or powerful when we can manipulate others. In fact, the American Psychological Association defines manipulation as a “behavior designed to exploit, control, or otherwise influence others to one’s advantage.”

Two benefits programs that may be available to individuals with disabilities—including those caused by mental health conditions—are Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).

I subscribe to a number of medical newsfeeds, and the responses from the physicians to the GLP-1 agonists can only be described as “giddy.” Doctors spoke of their joy at “finally” having something that could help their patients lose weight.

According to The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development, there are four common underpinnings to struggles with mental health: isolation, a lack of access to fundamental rights and services, exclusion, and prejudice.

Accidental injuries, a category that includes drug overdoses, are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45—a situation that seems unlikely to change any time soon. A major contributing factor to this crisis is the opioid epidemic, which continues to ravage the country. More than 105,000 people died from a drug overdose in the 12-month period ending in November 2023, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Virtual counseling is a form of mental health counseling provided through digital platforms like video calls, phone calls, or messaging. Think of it as telehealth for counseling. Popularized during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s here to stay.

Although it has been years since the world moved past the challenges of Covid-19, many organizations are still working to provide all the benefits of the conference experience to those within the professional counseling community.