Tabletop role-playing games (TRPG) such as Dungeons & Dragons™ are widely known and enjoyed by diverse individuals across the world. However, TRPGs and their players historically have experienced significant stigmatization due to the misconception by some that fantasy role play leads to psychological dysfunction. While a large body of research...
The dehumanization of Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) and marginalized communities does not end once an individual is released from an institution. The dehumanization process is kept alive with ineffective community supervision and the stigma associated with an individual’s incarnation history. Evidence of this continual dehumanization process is reflected...
The counseling profession has historically adopted a one-size-fits-all approach toward addressing bereavement. However, there is an emerging paradigm-shift in grief therapy that has been enabled by recent research that differentiates, for example, between types of grief and styles of grieving. This research project contributes to this nuanced approach to grief...
Counseling as a profession has been on a journey of self-examination as CACREP approaches the release of its revised standards and the world recovers from the tumultuous few years under the shadow of the pandemic. Cultural shifts in perspective have prompted new conversations around concepts related to sexuality, racial identity,...
The process of coming out by an individual of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ+) community involves recognition and disclosure, and it is a personal and important part of identity development. The process of coming out is also a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community’s self-disclosure of their sexual...
The self-help literature is full of texts on both self-compassion and postpartum depression. However, there has been minimal scientific exploration of the literature on these topics. As such, mental health researchers and practitioners have little sense of the psycholinguistic discourse contained in this literature. This study aimed to fill this...
Counselor education programs traditionally have student counselors role-play therapy sessions to enhance skills in rapport building, aligning with a theoretical orientation, and other essential communication skills. Students, however, are often left to determine their own choice of words when engaging in these practice sessions, and consequently, experience uncertainty regarding how...
Establishing a therapeutic alliance or a therapeutic bond has long been seen as an essential component of obtaining positive treatment outcomes in clinical practice. More recently, the idea of recognizing therapeutic alliance ruptures (disagreements about the tasks or goals of therapy or a problem in the therapeutic bond) during counseling...
Counselors, therapists and other mental health professionals are dedicated to finding more useful ways to prevent, assess and treat adolescents experiencing suicidal ideation. Recent research has shown that the use of Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide (IPTS) components in suicidal assessment and treatment have been effective for treating adults. However, a...
The professions of counseling, marriage and family therapy, and social work are highly controlled with regulators frequently issuing findings of professional misconduct against clinicians. Although much research has been conducted with regard to clinician professional misconduct in general, there is a scarcity of research investigating the relationship between gender and...