Blog 6: Counseling

I really appreciated the introduction to Chapter 8, especially the discussion of referral procedures, as I have often wondered and questioned where our role as school counselors ends and the need for outside intervention begins. I certainly understand the need for referral in the example provided, such as the case of a student who is severely depressed due to years of sexual abuse, but I liked how the authors elaborated on how the school counselor could still be involved in knowing what medications the student is taking, coordinating IEP meetings, providing individual counseling for other issues, and being available if the student experiences a crisis at school. Crisis intervention is another topic that I had questioned, hoping that my future school will have some sort of process in place that I will be expected to follow. I did not consider the existence of a school crisis committee, and think this could be an appropriate structure to implement if my school does not have an effective crisis intervention structure in place. When dealing with a suicide intervention, I really appreciated the straightforward recommendations for immediate suicide assessment, which include: remaining with the student, asking direct questions, encouraging them to express their feelings, focusing on the present, following the school’s intervention plan and alerting the crisis team in the building or district, and contacting the parent’s caregivers. Although many of these are intuitive, it was nice to see these in print to confirm my assumptions about the initial actions I should take. Many of the other topics reviewed in the chapter, like group counseling, assessment, and solution-focused counseling, are ones that are covered in detail in individual courses in our program, so I am now pretty confident in my knowledge and abilities in these areas. I did enjoy the discussion of developmentally appropriate counseling, as it reminded me that I may need to assess the unique needs of young people, including their attention span, level of insight, level of emotional intelligence, clarity of values, level of decision-making strategies, and ability to understand cause and effect relative to their decisions. In conducting these assessments, it is important to remember that they are young people and not just miniature adults, so our interventions should meet them at the life stage they are currently experiencing. Dollarhide, C., and Saginak, K. (2012). Comprehensive school counselingprograms: K-12 delivery systems in action (2nd Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.