The counseling profession has historically emphasized generalist practice, viewing specialization as a possible threat that could lend to fragmentation. Specialization is occurring within CACREP graduate programs (CACREP, 2016) through post-graduates focused on continuing education experiences and the professions’ acknowledgment of the importance of competence areas. Research has noted the importance...
Over the past 20 years, there has been a steady increase in the popularity of online gaming in the United States culture. There are many factors that have contributed to this spike in popularity, but the most significant are advancements in technology, televised competitions, social media, lucrative cash prizes, product...
Mental health disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide. The strong need for mental health services has prompted intensive global efforts to develop, evaluate, and deliver effective mental health treatment, especially for low- and middle-income countries. The counseling profession in the United States has responded to this global need...
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent issue that impacts individuals around the world. Mental health professionals need comprehensive and inclusive IPV training to support victims/survivors well. The IPV literature posits several concerns surrounding the quality of IPV training that counselors-in-training (CITs) receive. Obtaining an understanding in how master’s level...
In counselor education, gatekeeping is essential practice, particularly as new and learning counselors enter the field of counseling (Benshoff & Gibbons, 2011). While the expectation of gatekeeping is clear and valued in the profession of counselor education, gatekeeping is difficult for faculty (Chang & Rubel, 2019). Two intersecting factors that...
Home-based counseling (HBC) occurs when counselors provide therapy services to individuals and families within the clients’ home environment. Since its inception in the 1980s, HBC has become a common practice within the counseling field. In 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2014) named HBC one of the fastest-growing divisions...
Inpatient psychiatric hospitals are critical to delivering community-wide acute mental health care. Professional counselors hold roles as intake counselors within the system of inpatient facilities (Werrbach, 2011). While they are essential to the processes within the system, there is no known research on intake counselors and their tasks of assessment...
The purpose of this dual-manuscript dissertation is to assess and synthesize the current body of qualitative literature on the topic of the experience of counselor trainees as participants in experiential groups. The first manuscript is presented in Chapter 2. In this study, I performed a directed content analysis on 15...
This dissertation is organized in accordance to the Manuscript Documentation Dissertation format required by Oregon State University. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of Alzheimer’s disease, defines AD as marginalized population, and explains the relevance and characteristics of qualitative research. Also, Chapter 1 provides an overview of Manuscript 1 (Chapter...
The purpose of this dissertation was to contribute to deeper understanding of how men experience support seeking. The first manuscript is located in chapter 2 and titled A Qualitative Metasynthesis of Male Client Experiences of Counseling. This metasynthesis integrates sixteen pieces of qualitative research which contain first-person accounts of male...