Educating Students in Preventive Counseling

✍ Scribed by ROBERT K. CONYNE

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 646 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-0035
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1556-6978.1997.tb00394.x

✦ Synopsis

In this article, expanded clusters of skills thought to be necessary in learning and conducting preventive counseling are described. Implications for counselor education are provided.

More than 16 years ago, Lewis and Lewis (1981) published an important article addressing the education of counselors for primary prevention. Lewis and Lewis (1981) had intended their article to lessen the theory-practice gap between the competencies they thought counselors needed to perform preventive services and their existing skill base, which was "concentrated on one-toone or small group counseling" (p. 173). They suggested that many counselors lacked the special skills that preventive applications required. This deficit existed, according to the authors, even though the counseling profession's historical emphases on educational and developmental interventions for normally functioning clients placed counselors, as a group, "closer to the preventive model than other helpers can hope to reach" (Lewis 8r Lewis, 1981, p. 174). The purpose of this article is to update the contribution of Lewis and Lewis by providing a more comprehensive set of competencies for counselors doing primary prevention. Counselor educators may And this information useful in considering their curricula in relation to preventive counseling.

Lewis and Lewis (1981) described three special skill clusters needed by counselors to perform primary prevention interventions: Robert K. Conyne k a professor of counseltng in the Teacher's College a t the Untwrsity of Cincinnati. Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to Robert K. Conyne. Counseling Program, Unbersity of C t n c b a t i Teacher's College, 5269, CincinnaH. OH 45221 -2483.