Counseling Profession: Trends, Ethics, and Core Competencies

Introduction: Major Changes in the Counseling Profession

The counseling profession has experienced a great deal of change, especially during the 1990s. Several of those changes occurred in 1992, including the renaming of the AACD to the American Counseling Association (ACA), the addition of counseling as a primary mental health profession in the health care human resource statistics of the Center for Mental Health Services and the National Institute of Mental Health, and the writing of the multicultural counseling standards and competencies by Sue, Arredondo, and McDavis. Another major change during the 1990s was the inclusion of counselors as providers for managed health care organizations.

Two of the major trends facing counselors in the new century include serving an increasing number of clients recovering from violence, crisis situations, and trauma, and helping clients cope with loneliness and isolation.

Emerging Trends Facing Counselors in the New Century

The negative characteristics of the first trend are that crisis situations and acts of violence have become more deadly and prevalent in society since the 1990s — events such as the Columbine massacre and the 9/11 terrorist attacks serve as painful examples — and incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder have also become more prevalent as a result of these terrible events. The positive characteristics to emerge from this trend are that counselors have begun receiving specialized training in crisis counseling in order to better serve clients, and they have been able to develop practical, well-focused action plans and strategies to help clients of all ages recover.

The negative characteristic of the second trend is that more individuals today are experiencing extreme loneliness and isolation than ever before. The positive characteristic is that counseling relationships have helped these individuals significantly overcome their loneliness. For their part, counselors can rise to this challenge by recognizing how important they are in their clients' lives and by coming to regard their profession as a "calling" they are willingly answering.

The five most important qualities a counselor should possess are: the ability to listen, since clients more often desire to be heard than to be spoken to; the display of empathy and understanding, in order to show clients that the counselor appreciates the gravity of their situation; emotional insightfulness, so that one can tolerate and anticipate all types of emotions; the capacity for self-denial, so that one learns to attend to others' needs before one's own; and tolerance of intimacy, which is essential given that most counselor-client relationships are long-term and deeply personal.

Essential Qualities and Professional Development for Counselors

In order to improve professionally throughout their careers, counselors must first recognize that competency within the profession is directly related to how they function on a personal level. Because of this, counselors should become self-aware of their own personalities and attitudes, learn from their emotional experiences while maintaining emotional stability and maturity, successfully integrate the counseling techniques and knowledge they have acquired into their own lives, and learn to prevent or address occupational stress and burnout.

The developmental/wellness approach emphasizes that people engage in certain patterns of behavior through the various ongoing developmental stages of life. Counselors using this approach would therefore view a client based on which developmental stage his or her problem is emanating from. These counselors generally believe that behaviors appropriate to one stage may not be appropriate to another.