Jessica Lloyd-Hazlett

Adolescent Risk-Taking Behaviors: When Do Student Counselors Break Confidentiality?

Confidentiality is integral to counseling relationships, particularly for adolescent clients. The presence of “serious and foreseeable harm” (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2014, p. 5) may require a counselor to breach confidentiality to protect client well-being. However, counselors disagree about the ethicality of a number of professional behaviors, including definitions of risk. Such ethical divergences are even more pronounced for student counselors and when ethical concerns are value laden. A sample of 208 student counselors responded to a brief demographic questionnaire and 16-item ethics survey about an adolescent client engaging in various risking-taking behaviors. Results indicated student counselors were more likely to endorse notifying a parent/guardian as the frequency, intensity, and duration of behaviors increased or if the behavior involved self-harm. Student counselor age was the only participant/training program variable significantly correlated with ethical ratings. Implications for enhanced student counselor training for ethical work with adolescent clients engaged in risk-taking behaviors are discussed.

Fa-MI-ly Experiential Techniques to Integrate Motivational Interviewing and Family Counseling

Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidence-based, client-centered approach that provides a framework for the change process. Careful attention is given within MI to understand and meet clients across a continuum of readiness for change. While less readily applied to family counseling, MI facilitates therapeutic alliance, evokes motivation for change, and provides useful guidelines for conceptualizing and implementing family counseling services. This article (a) provides a brief overview of MI’s major tenets, (b) examines systems-level applications of MI principles, and (c) describes five counseling interventions developed by the authors that illustrate how MI may be integrated into family counseling practice.

Perceptions of the First Family Counseling Session: Why Families Come Back

This article reports the findings of a study that examined why families choose to return to family therapy after their first family therapy session. The 87 families that were referred to a university family counseling center for assistance with their children’s behavioral problems at school completed an author-developed survey in which they rated the influence of various therapist-related and family-related factors on their decision to return for a second session. Factor analysis of the survey data revealed that the families’ positive experience of the therapist during the first session had the strongest influence on their continuation decision. The findings suggest that family therapists are not helpless victims to client attrition after the first session, but rather, have the strongest potential for influencing client decisions to come back. Specific family therapist actions for maximizing family continuation after the first session are described.

Enhancing Student Counselor Program Evaluation Training through Creative Community Service-Learning Partnerships

ABSTRACT Counselors face increasing pressure to demonstrate accountability for client and agency outcomes. Despite persistent calls to embrace research and assessment, program evaluation remains relatively neglected in the practice and preparation of professional counselors. This is problematic as the profession positions counselors to understand variables most relevant to meaningful and client-centered mental health service outcomes. This article describes a 10-week service-learning project completed by student counselors enrolled in a program evaluation course. The author provides recommendations for effectively implementing creative community service-learning partnerships.

The good life: wellbeing and the new science of altruism, selfishness and immorality

In The Good Life: Wellbeing and the New Science of Altruism, Selfishness, and Immorality, Graham Music thoughtfully explores some of the most multifarious, yet essential, tensions of being human. Are humans primed for selflessness or selfishness? What is the role of evolutionary and social contexts, particularly early parental attachments, in shaping trajectories toward good or bad? Will altruism persist as Western societies are becoming increasingly individualized and digital? The questions Music poses about human nature are not simple nor are the potential explanations offered for the reader’s consideration. The Good Life traverses domains of evolutionary science, genetics, child and social psychology, attachment theory, moral development and game play, while always acknowledging the complexity and interconnections among these ways of knowing. Through a skillful integration of cutting edge interdisciplinary research, as well as personal and professional reflections based on his extensive work as a psychotherapist specializing in trauma and abuse, Music suggests that, in part, these questions may better be reframed as contextual rather than dichotomous. More than identifying discrete positions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, minimizing spill-over into related subfields of moral development such as antisocial behavior, stage theories, or various forms of character development. Also to Padilla-Walker and Carlo’s credit, they avoid the common trap of producing an edited volume that feels like a re-tread and repackaging of well-worn conceptual reviews. Instead, this work blends contemporary perspectives on running themes in the field (such as the role of parental socialization and volunteering) with leading-edge work (in particular in the neurological, genetic and multicultural domains). The volume also benefits greatly from the integration of varied paradigmatic frameworks, from the post-positivist approaches which could be found throughout and evinced most clearly in the Biological Perspectives section, to the constructivist (and, to a lesser degree, critical) orientations most prominently on display in the chapters comprising the Cultural and Contextual Perspectives section. Notably though, this latter section might have benefitted from a more inclusive integration of international and diverse religious viewpoints. The first chapter in the section provides a solid, broad overview of the cross-cultural literature in prosocial development, but the section overall could have better represented the indigenous perspectives of African, Latin American and Eastern cultures and religious traditions. Despite these relatively few limitations, Prosocial Development: A Multidimensional Approach provides what it sets out to: a comprehensive, up-to-date compendium on the topic of prosocial development with an approach that is necessarily multidimensional, given the inherently complex nature of the construct. The authors note in their opening chapter that their primary aim is to spur more research on prosocial development. Through covering much of what is known, identifying the myriad (and seemingly ever-expanding) gaps in this knowledge and offering numerous recommendations and directions for future research, they and their contributors have soundly achieved their purpose.

The Impact Project: A Relational Cultural Approach to Combating Bullying and Interpersonal Violence

ABSTRACT Acts of bullying and interpersonal violence have grave public health implications. Existing anti-bullying and interpersonal violence interventions rely on scripted, solution-focused protocols that lack relational shifts necessary for lasting change. The Impact Project is a grassroots campaign sponsored in conjunction with President Duffey’s 2015–2016 American Counseling Association Presidential Initiative on Anti-Bullying and Interpersonal Violence. The Impact Project is framed by relational cultural theory (RCT) and aims to help combat bullying and interpersonal violence by publicly honoring those who may not know or understand their value. This article addresses the mental and public health implications of bullying and interpersonal violence and the application of RCT to developing integrated community interventions. Recommendations for cultivating creative spaces, promoting resilience, and continuing the “impact” are provided.