Advancements in Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Introduction

Clinical and counseling psychology are big and important fields that support people's lives and well-being. These two areas keep growing thanks to scientific research, new assessment tools, and treatment options. This essay focuses on three main areas in clinical and counseling psychology: assessment, clinical work, and prevention guidelines.

Assessment

Ryder et al. (2011) say that clinical psychology deals with describing pathological phenomena and using psychological principles to help treat these issues. Basically, clinical psychologists focus on mental health, which includes normal or abnormal behaviors, mental disorders like major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, emotional health, healthy behaviors, and treatment or prevention methods. Clinical psychologists work in research, education, healthcare, training, or as school psychologists. On the other hand, counseling psychologists focus more on people with behavioral problems and less on serious mental health issues. The American Psychological Association (2019) states that counseling psychologists work with people facing physical, emotional, and mental health issues to improve their well-being, help with distress, and resolve crises. They often work at universities, schools, and assist with career planning and social issues.

Clinical and counseling psychologists use various methods to help with a person's issues, symptoms, or concerns. One popular method is called assessment. Gregory (2013) defines assessment as "appraising or estimating the level or magnitude of some attribute of a person." Testing is just a small part of assessments, which also use observations, interviews, rating scales, and checklists. In counseling psychology, interviews and observations are the main assessment tools. Common tests include objective and projective personality tests, individually administered tests of cognitive functioning, vocational interest tests, and brief scales to assess specific symptoms. Examples of tests include the Wechsler Intelligence Scales, Rorschach Inkblot Test, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

Ryder et al. (2011) state that clinical psychologists describe symptoms and syndromes. They use assessments to help determine mental disorders and ways to treat them. One of the most commonly used tools is the clinical interview, where the psychologist gathers information about the patient, such as medical history and symptoms (APA, 2019).

Nowadays, there are many different cultural backgrounds, so it's important to incorporate cultural differences in psychology. Ryder et al. (2011) explain that cultural psychology focuses on how a person's emotions and behaviors are influenced by their cultural environment or beliefs. Berry (2015) states that when people move to different cultural backgrounds, they bring their emotions, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, motives, prejudices, stereotypes, and values with them. To use cultural psychology, there has to be samples from many different cultures to gain the necessary knowledge, which then creates global psychology and psychological advancements. The main goal of cultural psychology is to explain and eliminate differences and biases, and create a better understanding of human behaviors from different cultures.

Clinical Work

Many psychologists consider themselves eclectic or integrative. The APA (2015) defines technical eclecticism as using techniques from many different theoretical frameworks to deal with complex issues. It uses a systematic, thought-out approach that balances theoretical perspectives and treatment processes. This approach is popular because it has a history of effectiveness and doesn't require a lot of time to get significant results. The other two common approaches are assimilative integration and theoretical integration. Stricker (2001) defines assimilative integration as an approach where "a solid grounding in one theoretical approach is accompanied by the willingness to incorporate techniques from other approaches." Theoretical integration is the hardest to achieve because it requires bringing together concepts from different approaches (Stricker, 2001). In other words, technical eclecticism uses many different strategies, theoretical integration combines two or more therapies, and assimilative integration uses one specific theoretical approach. The choice depends on which theoretical orientation would be most useful for the patient's treatment plan and fits the integration approach. Among clinical and counseling psychologists, the most popular orientation is the integrative/eclectic orientation (Norcross et al., 2005).

Each integrative perspective has its pros and cons. The positives about technical eclecticism are that it is personalized therapy that fits a person's specific needs and encourages the use of diverse strategies.

Prevention

The APA (2014) says that prevention includes stopping a problem behavior from occurring, delaying the onset of a problem behavior, reducing the impact of a problem behavior, strengthening knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that promote emotional well-being, and promoting institutional, community, and government policies that further physical, social, and emotional well-being of the larger community. The prevention guidelines were created to ensure that psychologists, the public, and other professionals are informed about the right way of professional practices in prevention (APA, 2014). The guidelines state a four-level framework at the micro, meso, exo, and macro levels, which are very important for human development. Micro is the person's family, meso is the community or workplace, macro is the nation or state, and exo is their school. These levels play a big role in a person's well-being. The prevention guidelines are applied to counseling and clinical psychologists to help people get the help they deserve.

Conclusion

Clinical and counseling psychology are quite similar and often overlap, but each has its own main focus, assessment tools, and perspectives. Clinical psychology focuses more on mental disorders, while counseling psychology deals with individuals with minimal mental health issues. For these psychologists to succeed, they focus on the well-being of their patients, finding the best treatment plans, and following prevention guidelines.