Recognizing the increase in school violence, California recently enacted the Hughes Bill that requires a positive behavioral intervention plan for individuals with exceptional needs. Although special education teachers are required to develop positive behavioral intervention plans, most have not been trained in the skills necessary to develop or…

Consultation is increasingly becoming one of the most important role responsibilities of the school psychologists, and can be distinguished by several types of services: collaborative consultation, mental health consultation, organizational consultation, behavioral consultation, and peer consultation. The efficacy of consultation services is…

This paper offers advice to school psychologists concerning the future of their profession in relation to crisis intervention. Crisis intervention will be more of a priority as the year 2000 approaches; therefore school psychologists need to expand their role and change their focus to include intervention to all children. School psychologists need…

Due to the frequent occurrences of violence in schools across America, one must wonder how a school and a community will cope in the face of a crisis. This paper examines the role of the school counselor in crisis intervention by having school counselors in Eastern Kentucky complete a survey concerning their competence in fulfilling this role. The…

Counselor development is a topic of great interest to both trainers and counselors-in-training. Several models of counselor development as presented in the literature are described. Recent research has investigated developmental factors relating to counselor identity and sense of self-efficacy from a trainee perspective. A model of five recurring…

The phenomenal growth in enrollment at community and technical colleges during the past decade has had a distinct impact on the role that counselors must play to continue to provide a viable contribution to the colleges. Specifically, Mesa Community College (MCC), in Arizona, has identified three trends which provide opportunities for counseling…

Therapeutic counseling, for either clinical or developmental purposes, has been traditionally influenced by the socio-cultural values in Western society. Central to these values, it can be argued, is liberal individualism that attempts to bring to people an increased sense of self-control and self-determination. As a result, many of the…

The success of crisis intervention work with international students is highly dependent not only on the skill of the professional staff involved, but also the availability and use of other student services that may be provided to the International Student Services (ISS) Office. There are many cultural issues that must be considered when counseling…

This study examined the attitudes, knowledge, comfort, and referral levels of school counselors in relation to working with suicidal adolescents. Subjects were 213 school counselors divided among elementary, junior high, and high school settings. Most of the counselors (92%) were found to be more comfortable assessing suicidal risk if a team…

Informal discussion groups, "rap groups", have been found to be an effective method for establishing rapport and understanding with mentally retarded adults in sheltered workshop settings. To investigate the use of rap groups as a field research approach with mentally retarded adults, four groups of 6 to 9 mentally retarded adults,…

Based on an earlier list of characteristics, ten assertions were derived about the nature of psychotherapy upon which it was believed that humanistic therapists would agree. These assertions were then submitted to three groups of therapists (111 returns) listed in the "National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology":…

This paper presents the basic premises of Solution Focused Brief Therapy, a model of intervention based on systems theory, and how this approach is uniquely suited to the needs of school psychologists within a public school setting. Five key principles are described: (1) complaints are interaction based; (2) change in one part of the system leads…

Although the need for psychological counseling for the unemployed has been recognized, the development of specific counseling strategies for this population has not been systematically addressed. The need for specific counseling intervention strategies for the recently and chronically unemployed was examined in a study of 25 recently unemployed…

Mental health counselors who work with children realize that the family is in a position to support or sabotage counseling efforts. If an accurate discrimination can be made between competent and incompetent families, both can be better served. Sources of information about a family include anecdotal records, teacher reports, and interviews with…

This paper was designed to provide professional counselors with a comprehensive but concise method of accurately evaluting, interviewing, and planning for treatment of eating disorder clients. The paper is organized in five sections. The first section, Diagnosis, compares, contrasts, and offers clear explanations of the diagnostic criteria for…