Advancements in Clinical and Counseling Psychology

Clinical and counseling psychology have become huge and important fields that help and support people lives and their well being. These 2 fields are continuously growing due to scientific research, the development of assessment tools and treatment options. This paper focuses on 3 main areas in clinical and counseling psychology. Those 3 areas are assessment, clinical work and prevention guidelines.

Assessment:

Ryder et al (2011) Says that clinical psychology is concerned with describing pathology phenomena and using psychological principles to step in and help these phenomena theraputically. Meanings that clinical psychologist main focus is on mental health such as Normal or abnormal behaviors, mental disorders like major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder emotional health, healthy behaviors, treatment or prevention methods. Clinical psychologist are found to work In areas of research, education, health care, training or as school psychologists. Counseling psychologist focus more on people that have behavioral problems and less on mental health issues. The American psychological association (2019) States that counseling psychologist work with people with physical, emotional, and mental health issues, to improve their well being, help with feelings of distress and resolve crisis. Counseling psychologists are seen to work at universities, schools, help with career planning, and social. Clinical and counseling psychology asst use many different methods to help with a person's issues karma symptoms or concerns one of the most popular methods are called assessments Gregory (2013) defines assessment as 'appraising or estimating the level or magnitude of some attribution of a person, testing for example is a small part of assessments which also uses observations, interviews, rating scales and checklists.' In counseling psychology psychologists use interviews and observations as the main assessment tool. The most common tests that counseling psychologists use include objective and projective personality tests, individually administered tests of Cognitive functioning, vocational interest tests, and brief scales to assess specific Symptomology (psychologyiresearchnet.com). Example of tests include the wechsler intelligence scales, Rorschach inkblot test, the Minnesota mutiphasic personality inventory as well as many others. Ryder et al. (2011) States that clinical psychologists describe symptoms and syndromes. Clinical psychologist use assessments to help determine mental disorders and ways to trip them. One of the most commonly used assessment tool is the clinical interview where the psychologist gathers information about the patient such as medical history symptoms (APA, 2019).

Today there are so many different cultural backgrounds which is why it is important to incorporate cultural differences in psychology. Rider E TAL. 2011 explains that the core claim of cultural psychology is not that groups differ or that culture matters but that culture and human side cology make each other up. Cultural psychology focuses mainly on how a person's emotions and behaviors are influenced by their cultural environment or the beliefs. Berry (2015) States that when people find other places to live or work in different cultural backgrounds they take with them there some tions, attitudes, beliefs comrade knowledge, motives, prejudice, stereotypes and the values that they grew up learning with them to that new environment. In other words in order to use cultural psychology there has to be samples of many different cultures to gain the knowledge that is needed which then creates global psychology as well as creating psychological advancements. The main point of cultural psychology is to explain and eliminate differences, biases and create a better understanding of human behaviors from different cultures.

Clinical work:

Many psychologists classify themselves as eclectic or integrative. The APA (2015) defines technical elect ism as the use of techniques from many different theoretical frameworks to deal with complex issues of a person. It uses a sit stomatic thought out approach that balances theoretical perspectives and treatment processes. This approach is the most one use because the psychologist has a history of knowing how this approach works, it does not require a lot of time to gain the biggest results. The other 2 common approaches used which are assimilative integration and theoretical integration. Striker (2001) defines assimilative integration as an approach where 'a solid grounding in one theoretical proach that is accompanied by the willingness to incorporate techniques from other approaches.' Theoretical integration is the most difficult level to achieve integration because it requires bringing together theoretical concepts from different approaches (Stricker, 2001). In other words theoretical elect ism uses many different strategies, theoretical integration whose is 2 or more therapies, and assimilative integration uses one specific theoretical approach. The way to choose 1 is which theoretical orientation would be most useful for the patient's treatment plan as well as fits in the integration approach. Among clinical and counseling psychology the most popular used orientation is that integrative/electric orientation (Norcross et al, 2005).

The integrative of perspectives each has some pros and cons to them. The positives about technical electives I'm are that it is personalized therapy that is fit to a person specific needs and it encourages to use diverse strategies.

Prevention:

The APA (2014) Says that prevention includes one of the following 's stopping a problem behavior from occurring, delaying the onset of a problem behavior, reducing the impact of a problem behavior, strengthening the knowledge com I attitudes and behaviors that promote emotional well being and promoting institutional, community in government policies that further physical social and emotional well being of the bigger community.' The prevention guidelines were created to make sure that psychologists the public, and other professionals are informed about the right way of professional practices in prevention (APA, 2014). The guidelines state the for level framework at the micro, meso, exo, and macro levels Which are very important human development. Micro is family like the person's family, meso is community or the persons work site, 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 psychologist to help those people get the help that they deserve.

Conclusion

Clinical and counseling psychology are very similar they overlap each other however each one has their own main focus, assessment tools and perspectives. Clinical psychology focuses more on people with mental disorders and counseling psychology focuses more on people who have minimal mental health issues. For these psychologists to succeed they focus on the well being of their patients, what the best treatment plans are, as well as falling the prevention guidelines.

References

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