Toward a hypothesised role of the school counsellor (Pt 1)

Dear Editor,
The recent call for the installation of counselors in schools as a resource to support students, teachers and parents in the learning-teaching process invites an exploration for clarification. Counseling has been labelled as one of the helping professions along with social work, psychology and psychiatry. In a mental health sense, this kind of helping is more than just giving aid or offering a helping hand, and this role exploration of the counselor is intended as information for public consumption with nothing written in stone in relation to the functional reality on the ground. This model is taken from the complex American educational system where counselors develop specialties within their counseling teams in schools and parts of this exploration may be alien to the unschooled in counselor education.
Counseling on a continuum: On a broad dimension in this helping process, the role of counseling can be viewed in the following continuum: information giving – advising – counseling – psychotherapy – psychopharmacology therapy – from the least to the most intensive helping intervention based on need of the client. In this article client is the generic term for the person receiving services. Briefly, along this continuum, giving information may be all that is needed for a client to make a decision to solve a problem and that’s the end of the information giving contact ;  advising may need both, giving the information and helping make a quick decision to solve a problem as advisors routinely do in American high schools and colleges; counseling may need more intensive intervention concerned with helping clients resolve/correct emotional difficulties blocking ability to achieve goals or function effectively and this is usually with a “normal” population as in schools; psychotherapy is a longer term process concerned with the reconstruction of the person and larger changes in personality structure; psychotherapy is restricted in conception to those with pathology, “abnormal populations,” and is usually the domain of social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists; lastly, psychopharmacology therapy is the management of psychiatric symptoms with medication prescribed by psychiatrists, usually accompanied by adjunct verbal therapy to monitor symptoms of a diagnosed syndrome. Psychologist is a term that means someone with a doctoral degree, usually experienced in the management of complex mental health issues.
Psychotherapy is not the domain of school counselors as they go through a different curriculum preparation and are not trained for intervention at the level of psychotherapy; schools are not mental health clinics even though counselors may be viewed as mental health personnel; their real job title is guidance counselors. Psychotherapy is an intervention that mainly involves clinical psychologists, clinical social workers and psychiatrists, sometimes working as a team in a clinical setting such as a hospital. Although school counselors are not qualified to do psychotherapy based on their training, there may be overlap between the meaning of psychotherapy and counseling especially in public usage. However, a presenting behavior being displaced in school may turn out to have a different underlying emotional situation and the school counselor is expected to assess it and take the necessary remedial steps.
Observation on the continuum: each element in this continuum can be very comprehensive. Take for example, the first seemingly simple element, information giving. This is the distribution of information appropriate to the age and cognitive development of students during the school years and to parents through class visits continually provided throughout the elementary and high school years.
According to Hoppock (1992) information giving serves the following purposes:
A. Increases feelings of security
B. Encourages natural curiosity
C. Extends horizons
D. Encourages wholesome attitudes
E. Develops desirable approaches to decision making
F. Is helpful when pragmatic decisions such as whether to continue in school for a career or drop out.
The school counsellor is really an encyclopedia of information in career and life planning beyond the school years, and that’s why one of his/her roles as resource specialist becomes the go-to person for information and help. The guidance counsellor may be responsible for all educational entries in permanent school records that follow students throughout the school years, records sometimes under his/her secure safe keeping. The actual process of counselling, however, is a very complex, comprehensive engagement towards the optimum self-actualization of students within a healthy educational environment.

Sincerely,
Dr Udayram
Ramharack
(Psychologist)