Group counseling and its impact on schools

1. Introduction and Group Formation

Mental health within an academic setting has become a contentious and complex subject for society. Here, students are faced with a much more perverse social environment that has severe implications for their overall mental health and well-being. Compounding these issues, are socioeconomic instances that further exacerbate and already negative mental health environment. These issues are not only complex, but are becoming more pervasive within society. Elements such as income inequality, lower wages for low skilled jobs, rising crime, and other issues all can plaque students. Still further issues relate to media and its indirect impact of teenagers. Here, these elements include very aggressive video games, unrealistic expectations based on social media posts, television ads, and inappropriate music. All of these elements coalesce to form an environment in which active and engage counseling within an academic setting. Counselors will not only be able to improve the mental health of students dealing with the elements presented above, they can also improve social-emotional well-being of participants as well. As it relates to the group description, many of the students who will participate in the counseling session are considered “at-risk” in many respects. These students often suffer from poor family dynamics which makes it difficult to succeed both personally and professionally. These dynamics could potentially include physical abuse, drug and alcohol abuse or other forms of family dysfunction. These students also suffer from poor academic performance as a result of past traumas or current experiencing within there community. Here, these elements can take many forms which include a community heavily engaged in crime. Lack of role models within a particular community or low socioeconomic status. The duration of the sessions will last 24 months. When forming the psychoeducational group, it is important to have both similarities and differences within all group members. Here, group members will be screened based on the severity of their circumstances and their potential ability to rectify their current situation. The group will be formed by those with differing cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to help reinforce a diversity of opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints. To identify these potential candidates, it is important to create relationship with teachers, staff, school leaders, and coaches. These individuals can better identify students who could benefit from intervention services, thus providing a high quality and reputable input (Alexander, 1990).

2. Theoretical Foundation

To begin, the theoretical foundations of psychotherapy are based heavily on the theory of personality and the overall etiology of emotional trauma. Here group theoretical foundations will be based on the view that psychoneuroses reflect the conflict of instinctual desires and the limitations and circumstances imposed by society. This can come in many forms but often results in adverse consequences for the child and their overall community. It is important, from a counseling perspective to recognize that different theoretical approaches will have different impacts on different individuals. As a result, it is important for counselors to leverage a variety of different theoretical frameworks to better adapt to the needs of their high school clients. As a result, the theoretical foundations for this proposal will utilize various components of the psychodynamic, humanistic and behavioral counseling principles (Broderick, 2010).

The theoretical foundations of the group counseling sessions will be based heavily on group cooperation and involvement. In addition, the next theoretical foundation will be based on properly developing the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind of the individual. Here, all three categories have a direct impact on the effectiveness of the overall counseling sessions. Those who are attending the sessions often have unconscious biases and heuristics that harm their ability to properly overcome their internal strife and difficulty. Here many of those attending the group counseling session have suppressed memories which are very difficult to access. These events often include traumatic events that require a qualified school counselor to help recover (Breen, 1998).

3. Group Process and Development

The group process and development will leverage the humanistic approach of counseling and assumes that all individuals have the innate ability to grow form an emotional standpoint. The first step in the group development process is establishing the psychodynamic approach of counseling mentioned above. This approach, as developed by Sigmund Freud, proposed the theory that illness is developed in the subconscious mind. Here, the group process and development foundations will first use many of the principles taught by Freud to identify any subconscious biases. This is a very demanding and often difficult procedure as it requires strength on the part of the high school student to divulge these instances in either a group or personal setting. As it relates to the overall process of development students will first have to balance the three elements of their personality so that neither the Id nor the Superego is dominant. Her the group process will involve understanding each of these elements to better adapt treatment efforts. This will in turn, help the counselor identify traumatic events that have been suppressed by students within the subconscious mind. This is done through the process of psychoanalysis. As defined by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis is used to encourage the client to examine childhood or early memory trauma to gain a deeper understanding of events. This is the first step in the process and development phase as it requires the client to become aware and engage with dilemmas that are repressed in the unconscious mind. This in turn may help the client to release negativities associated with these earlier events in their life.

This is the reason that master of the Id, the Ego, and Superego are important within the group development process. For high school students, these three personality elements are often convoluted and complex. For example, the Id represents that part of the personality which represents, the need for basis human desires such as food and shelter. This is innate in most human beings at birth as it directly relates to the need for survival. However, the Ego and the Superego are heavily related to the high school students and their ability to benefit from school counseling. The ego relates to self-awareness with the superego is the overall conscious of the student. By unlocking these two elements, group counseling processes and developments will be improved (Campbell, 2007).

Through the humanistic approach to counseling, the counselor can then leverage the ability of students to explore their own thought and feelings, thereby helping them to solve their own internal problems with productive solutions. This is a critical element to include within the overall group counseling sessions as it provided accountability for high school students. This is particularly beneficial for minorities who are susceptible to scapegoating other communities and individuals for their problems. It is well documented that certain minorities blame “White America” or other elements within society on their own inability to improve in life. This is self-destructive and counterproductive to improving the lives of high school students. Envy, jealously, or the act of blaming others is very common and only undermines counseling progress within the school setting. Through the humanistic approach, high school students will learn how to better understand how negative responses to life events can lead to psychological discomfort. The approach aims for self-acceptance of both negative and positive aspects of a high school students characters and personality. Here, the counselor, will help students explore their individual thoughts and leverage them to explore their own solutions. This solution is more akin to coaching and can work well for students looking for an authoritative figure that can help guide them. This approach is powerful as it leverages empathy and genuineness that ultimately establishes a relationship of trust with the counselor. Finally, through the behavioral approach of counseling, students can learn to better identify and mitigate the impact of future traumatic events on their life. This is final and arguable most critical element within the group development process as it helps to solidify behaviors that will last a lifetime within the student. Here, this technique looks to mitigate unwanted behaviors and replace with much more positive and reinforcing behaviors. This will ultimately, help the student respond when another traumatic situation occurs in their life. Here, the student can use their behavioral principles to properly adjust and improve adverse outcomes that might occur in their later years.

These concepts ultimately help establish a culture of trust within group participants. The humanistic approach helps students create achievable goals and milestones for their overall personal development, while also acknowledging their fears and vulnerabilities. Finally the behavior approach of counseling helps to self-identify traumatic events and leverage the learnings for the group sessions to mitigate their overall impacts.

4. Intervention

School counselors are heavily involved in the caring for development challenges of high school students. Here, many counselors use classroom guidance along with small group exercises to help generate creative interventions for students. Research has shown that the high school years are very intense as it relates to human development. In fact, certain studies have shown that high school years are defined by the inability of adolescents to find and develop their own sense of self (Erikson, 1963). For young teenage boys in particular, high school years are a struggle with development and overall self-awareness. Here, teenagers struggle with physical change, confusion related to social constructs, finding meaning in life, and a need to connect with others. Thankfully these challenges also present numerous opportunities for the use of creative intervention techniques. These interventions leverage the needs of adolescents to allow them to better cope with many of the uncertainties of the world and do so in a productive manner. These interventions also help to build and establish much more intimate communication networks between counselors and students. These networks along with the development of trust mentioned above, improve students willingness to engage in self-expression and their ability to accept their own uniqueness.

As it relates to activities, research has shown that activity-based discussions are very beneficial for minority students. These interventions allow students to think critically while also developing relationships with others. As such the three primary goals of this proposal will be to improve interpersonal skills, reduce overall distress when dealing with traumatic events, and improve overall self-awareness and self-confidence. There is a litany of activities designed to help achieve these outcomes in a very efficient and productive manner. For example, one such activity is called “Drawing a house,” in which a pair of students both students hold one pen together and attempt to draw a house use only non-verbal communication. This activity, although very simple, can be very potent as it provides students with cultural context, allows them to see differences in cultural elements, and work collaboratively with others. Other activities involve have students portray a certain notable role model or character such as Bill Gates or Barack Obama. Likewise, anti-role models are used to help show students the overall consequences of incorrect behaviors in life and the resulting impact of poor decisions.

In addition to these simple intervention strategies, most high school counselors will leverage group counseling sessions due primarily to time constraints and the sheer number of students who require services relative to available counselors. Group counseling is very beneficial as it helps to further foster connections with students undergoing similar circumstances. This is particularly helpful as many adolescents are looking for a sense of connections and purpose during their high school years. Having small group counseling sessions can help achieve this goal. Here too adventure-based counseling has proved very beneficial for students as it provides both a creative and beneficial intervention technique. Come creative activities include “Blind Maze.” Here a leader provides verbal directions of a group through a maze in which their sight is significantly inhibited. Other activities include group and team challenges that are designed to help students build relationship while learning on appropriate soft skills such as communication and trust.

5. Ethical Consideration

The primarily ethical consideration for counselors relates to the exchange, acceptance, retention and dissemination of personal information to third parties. Here it is important to make sure all relevant information remains confidential and is not shared with third parties without the consent of the student or their parent. Here it is important to secure information so that it can not be easily stolen, hacked, or compromised. For one, this could first undermine the overall relationship of trust between the counselor, the school, and the parents of the student. By undermining the relationship, it becomes much more difficult to foster positive developments within the student. As such it is important to protect the information of students, their conditions, and information with the highest standards

Likewise, counselors must also contend with the ethical considerations for students who are in extremely adverse circumstances. Here, certain students may be experiencing heavy abuse or be located in an environment with heavy drug use and crime. These environments can significantly threaten the well-being of the teenage and potentially their own life. As a result, the counselor may have an ethical obligation to report these circumstances to the appropriate authority as a means of protecting the child who is exposed to severely adverse circumstances. This has the potentially to create an uncomfortable relationship with parents, the teenager and the school. However, for the safety of the child, it is the counselors ethical duty to protect them.

Finally, the counselor will occasionally be faced with circumstances that may allow them to engage in intimate relationships with teenagers and their parents. It is important for counselors to remain professional at all times with their patients and their respective families. Here, it is important that counselors did not give the appearance of anything other than a professional relationship as this can severely undermine the credibility of the profession and of the school