MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

ABSTRACT: Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. (46.6 million) experience some form of mental illness in a given year. According to A Naturalistic Longitudinal Evaluation of Counseling in Primary Care, after patients were provided counseling “there was a significant reduction in severity of symptoms” for anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and quality of life. Helping skills are a critical aspect of meaningful and effective counseling. This quick reference guide covers the standardized three-stage helping model and its associated skills. The guide first recognizes creator Clara Hill and provides background and disclaimers regarding her current model. Intended audiences are addressed and context for the intended use of the guide and its skills give additional framework. The guide’s first section includes an explanation for the first client stage- Exploration. This section introduces and directs all skills intended to explore client thought and feelings such as restatements, reflection of feelings and open questions. The second portion includes an exploration through client Insight stage and all associated skills designed to enhance a client’s understanding of themselves, an event or problem. The third section explores the action stage- utilizing skills such as direct guidance and feedback to promote action for change within a client. Each main section consists of a stage introduction and subsequent teaching of each type of associated skill, alongside templates and vignette narratives for practice. The guide is designed to inform and support in the task of learning and utilizing helping skills in in-vivo sessions, in class or in daily life.
WC: 248

READER'S PROFILE: A student (undergraduate or graduate) not associated with the PSYC433 context which is framed around Clara Hill’s textbook model. He/She is skeptical of the model.

READER'S RESPONSE: Hmm. I can see how this could be considered a rudimentary guide on the helping skills themselves, but it seems a little unnecessary and redundant (as many skills are the same in different “stages”, just with a different intent of use) to categorize them into these so-called “stages.” Current hypotheses suggest that these “client stages” are a fallacy, and the client is never in just any one stage or linear pathway at any given time. Though the disclaimer may provide some relief to this update in the current research, it may be even more helpful to create a guide just stating skills and range of use for each, instead of categorizing them into stages. However, I do see some merit in grouping the skills for a basic, categorical model of all of the intentions of each skill type.

REVISED THESIS OR PROBLEM STATEMENT: My problem statement is a condition to be improved upon: This would be the available
resources for the PSYC433 Helping Skills Lab (mainly) and available in the counseling
psychology field for prospective therapists.

VOICE: Third person throughout except for the introduction, where I will use first person to provide an introduction of myself and the purpose/credibility of this document as well as for the disclaimer.

CITATION: Citations will vary from statistic studies to textbook models to references to outside sources for more information to professor/TA lectures and anecdotes throughout.

K -- good plan. I wonder if (over the summer) you could sketch something about the stages presented in a longitudinal direction as this is the overall process BUT, with some arrows of recursiveness.

I find this true of stasis steps, too: horizontal but also recursive!

Looking forward to this. And, cheering for you with all your tasks and considerations this spring.