Expert Interviews & Perspectives in Counseling

“School counseling is 100-plus years old,” says Eric Sparks, EdD, Deputy Executive Director for ASCA. “Starting as vocation guidance in the early 1900s, school counseling has shifted from a job position to a service and finally to an organized K-12 schoolwide program that improves outcomes for all students.”

Factors as diverse as diet, stress, and drug use can produce epigenetic change. Epigenetics helps us understand how nature and nurture can interact to produce an outcome, including whether a person develops a psychological disorder.

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.

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.

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.

When you think of the best moments of your childhood, outside of your home, who comes to mind? A favorite teacher, coach, neighbor, friend? Whether formal or informal, positive relationships with mentors benefit youth and adults.

The Association for Play (APT) provides the official definition of play therapy as “the systematic use of a theoretical model to establish an interpersonal process wherein trained play therapists use the therapeutic powers of play to help clients prevent or resolve psychosocial difficulties and achieve optimal growth and development.”