Counseling

The profession of counseling is dynamic, adaptive, and centered on meeting the needs of individuals in their particular environment. The goals of the counseling profession are directed toward assisting individuals to become self-sufficient and capable of managing their problems in efforts to lead productive, fulfilling lives. Moreover, the counseling process provides a therapeutic context to help individuals recognize and effectively use unused or underused resources and opportunities. Hence, through the process of counseling, individuals become effective and empowered self-helpers as they learn how to manage problem situations and develop life-enhancing opportunities. Counseling is a collaborative, two-way process that involves active involvement between client and counselor. According to Gerard Eagan, the process of counseling represents an “-ing” word that illustrates active engagement and involvement in a series of therapeutic activities or interventions that will create and elicit constructive change. The art of counseling involves a process in which skilled counselors assist individuals to develop tailored programs that will encourage constructive change in efforts to live more fully. Individual counseling is driven and determined by client needs and is effective to the degree that the needs and concerns of clients are successfully met.

According to Carl Rogers (1902–1987), the counseling relationship is characterized as a relationship in which one person has the objective to promote growth, development, and maturity in another person with the goal to assist the other person to learn how to effectively cope with life. The counselor's role is to facilitate self-growth in individuals and to make individuals aware of possible alternatives or choices available in their lives. Counselors have the responsibility to ascertain by means of conducting a thorough assessment which counseling interventions, services, and treatment modalities will most likely lead to positive outcomes. In particular, competent counselors will amalgamate research with practice in efforts to afford quality service to clients. The goals of counseling, regardless of the occupational setting, involve behavioral, cognitive, and lifestyle change; insight and self-knowledge; and amelioration of suffering and symptomatolology. Professional counselors provide an array of services that promote mental health and well-being through a variety of counseling practices that range from individual counseling, to couples and family counseling, to group counseling.

The profession of counseling is rooted in a variety of disciplines, which has led to the development of a variety of counseling specialties, in the fields of marriage and family counseling, school counseling, rehabilitation counseling, college counseling, and addiction counseling, to name a few. Hence, counselors work in a variety of occupational settings, from private practice; to community mental health agencies; to medical, educational, jail, and prison settings; to business settings, and they offer a wide range of services to a diverse population of individuals.