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Counselling Therapies

Book Review: Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and Adolescents

Greco, L.A., and Hayes, S.C. (2008). Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and Adolescents. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications. Acceptance and mindfulness based treatments are identified within the field of third-generation behaviour therapies. These approaches seek to move beyond traditional behavioural and cognitive concepts to acknowledge contextual aspects. Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and […]

A Brief Comparison of Psychologies

What is it about a counselling or psychotherapy process that makes people change? In other words: what are the mechanisms of therapy? What does the paradigm supporting a given school of psychology assume about the nature of human beings and therefore how they can change? What are the main concepts of a given psychology and […]

ACT: Definitions, Goals and Underlying Philosophy

Acceptance and commitment therapy (usually pronounced as the word “act” rather than the initials “A-C-T”) is a form of clinical behavioural analysis developed in 1986 by psychologists Steven Hayes, Kelly Wilson, and Kirk Strosahl. Originally called comprehensive distancing, it gets its current name from one of its core messages: the injunction to accept what is […]

Professor Windy Dryden on REBT

Professor Windy Dryden, author of nearly 200 books, discusses how his journey through the world of psychology led to his enthusiastic adoption of the precepts and practice of REBT. REBT is one of the most thoroughly researched and widely used therapeutic approaches in the UK today, and has also been called ‘applied philosophy’ for its […]

Psychosocial Treatments for Schizophrenia

Successful treatment of schizophrenia depends on a regimen of both drug and psychosocial support therapies. While antipsychotic medication can help control the symptoms of psychosis associated with schizophrenia, it cannot help the person find and maintain a job, establish effective social relationships, increase their coping skills, or teach them to communicate well with others. Poverty, […]

Play Therapy Activities to Engage Children

In play therapy, children are encouraged to express, through play, all the things they may have difficulty saying or contextualising into words. As a consequence of this primary focus, play therapy has expanded to include most of the expressive art forms including drawing, painting, sculpturing, music, dance, drama, movement, poetry, and storytelling. So while the […]

Developing Social Skills with Play Therapy

Social skills include the ways in which the child relates to others in order to make friends, get their needs met, be assertive, employ boundaries and cooperate. In order to develop social skills effectively, it is important that the child understands and experiences different behaviours and their consequences. To achieve this in play therapy, a […]

Book Review: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxiety Disorders

Eifert, Georg H. Ph. D., and Forsyth, John P. Ph. D. 2005. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications Inc. There are literally hundreds of publications available, both to the counselling practitioner and lay person regarding the understanding and treatment of anxiety. Many focus on behavioural and cognitive behavioural approaches to assist in dealing with anxiety, ‘Acceptance […]

Happiness, Positive Psychology and Wellbeing

The concept of happiness is the corner stone of the assumptions of positive psychology. Happiness is characterised by the experience of more frequent positive affective states than negative ones as well as a perception that one is progressing toward important life goals (Tkach & Lyubomirsky, 2006). Identifying factors that contribute to happiness has proven to […]

Treatment Steps in Behaviour Therapy

Behaviour therapy/counselling is used to help “clients acquire new coping skills, improve communication, or learn to break maladaptive habits and overcome self-defeating emotional conflicts” (Corsini & Wedding, 2000). The behavioural therapist/counsellor focuses on interpreting the client’s behaviour, emphasising a collaborative and positive relationship with the client and values the use of objectivity to assess and […]

Attachment Theory

Attachment theory has emerged as a leading tool for understanding the deeper roots of the dynamics in a close relationship. Originally developed to explain attachments of children to their caregivers, this theory has been especially fruitful in couple therapy as it helps to explain how adults come to depend on one another. Attachment is viewed […]

Behaviour Couple Therapy

Behaviour couple therapy is concerned about how people learn and unlearn dysfunctional behaviours. The model relies on cognitive behaviour theory whereby the general assumption is that changing the cognitions of an individual is critical to help clients overcome their problematic behaviours and bring about change. The theory also believes that behaviour is maintained by its […]

Motivational Interviewing Techniques

The fundamental approach to motivational interviewing interactions?contains the following four elements: Open-ended questions Affirmations Reflective listening Summaries Motivational interviewing creates an acronym OARS from this and the goal in using OARS is to assist the person to move forward, creating change talk and motivation from within. This change talk contains statements that the client may […]