Expert Interviews & Perspectives in Counseling

Learning and attention issues can pose difficulties for individuals acquiring academic skills like reading, writing, and math. They can also pose challenges in other areas related to learning like listening and comprehension, organization and focus, and even social and motor skills.

Bullying can affect people of all ages emotionally, mentally, and physically. While it is an issue that predominantly affects children and adolescents, bullying can still be problematic through adulthood. The effects of childhood bullying can be long-lasting, with many adults being able to vividly reference times they were bullied decades after it happened.

Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease for children in the US. Each year, an estimated 15,780 children across the country are diagnosed with cancer, and an average of 40,000 children in the US are in active cancer treatment at any given time; approximately 20 percent will not survive it.

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.

“Together for mental health” is this year’s campaign by the American Association of Suicidology in honor of National Suicide Prevention Month. Know the signs, be aware, ask questions if needed, be kind, and seek professional help for you or for others.

Even though we’re very excited to be accepted to college, the experience can be stressful. Moving away from the support of home, accepting financial burdens, coping with roommates, figuring out how a bureaucracy works, and preparing for seemingly endless tests and papers can be overwhelming.

As a counselor, you hope to have a good ending in which the therapist and client have a final session to say goodbye and discuss aftercare plans. This is not always the case. To increase the odds of a good ending, termination must be discussed throughout the counseling process, starting at the first session.

Recent acts of racism and discrimination have opened simmering mental health wounds and further amplified the stress minorities face on a daily basis. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, George Floyd’s brutal murder, and the proliferation of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic are just a few examples.

Around 12 million Americans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Once referred to as shell shock and combat fatigue, PTSD is often associated with military veterans, but it also affects survivors of domestic abuse, sexual violence, car accidents, and other forms of trauma.

It is a well-established fact that the pandemic has devastated America’s mental health. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, one in five adults in the US had experienced mental illness last year. Since then, the rate has increased to an estimated one in three. Racial and socioeconomic inequality in policy and practice exacerbate the issue further: today, only one in three Black adults with mental health issues receives care.