Creative Interventions to Increase Counselor-in-Training Wellness

Wellness is a broad term that emphasizes a person’s current state of mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and professional wellness. Professional counseling was built upon the foundations of wellness and practitioner self-care. While counseling programs understand the importance of wellness and counseling ethics emphasize the necessity of professional wellness, students frequently do not feel prepared or trained enough in wellness dimensions. This manuscript provides a rationale for a program wellness model and outlines a proposed series of interventions aimed at increasing students’ understanding, ability to self-assess, and strategies related to self-care and wellness

Play Therapy Panel

Play Therapy Panel Sunny Teeling, private practice, University of North Texas Stephanie Eslick, Covenant Family Solutions Kate Haberman, The Center for Foundational and Relational Wellness, LL

The Effects of Adlerian Play Therapy on Adopted Children’s Externalizing Behaviors: A Single Case Design

In the United States adoption is the preferred resolution for children who have been removed from their biological parents care and are unlikely to return; however this process leaves children at increased risk to develop insecure attachments. Identifying developmentally appropriate effective counseling interventions helps add to the growing body of research that indicates increased risk of life long problematic behaviors in children with insecure attachments can be reduced by early interventions. This single case research design explored the impact of Adlerian Play Therapy in adopted children identified as having disruptive classroom behaviors. Children participated in twice weekly, individual 30 minute sessions of Adlerian Play therapy over the course of 10 weeks. Participants showed mixed results with improvements in overall Total Problem behaviors, but a decrease in on-task behaviors as directly observed by an objective rater. Additionally children’s ratings of their maternal and peer acceptance levels decreased from pre to post-test indicating children perceived themselves as less competent. This is in contrast to teacher’s ratings of children’s actual levels of competence which suggests participants showed increases in the areas of cognitive competence and peer acceptance. Despite positive results from this study, it highlights the need for continued research with this population using this intervention

Cross-Cultural Mentoring in Counselor Education: A Call to Action

Given the lack of formalized cross-cultural mentorship guidelines within professional counseling associations and accreditation programs, the recruitment and retention of marginalizedgraduate students, may be in jeopardy. The authors explored the value of mentoring for graduate students, the exponential growth rate of diversity within graduate programs, and how the disparity of marginalized faculty members creates a need and opportunity for cross-cultural mentorship. Recommendations for the creation of holistic cross-culturalmentorship guidelines for faculty-studentdyads are provided