Mental health counselors specialize in various issues and age groups, including private practice counseling, psychiatric counseling, youth counseling, and geriatric counseling. They help clients reflect on and develop healthy strategies for addressing mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.
Mental health counselors work to help people who are struggling with a variety of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, suicidal feelings, sadness and stress. While these counselors are generally trained to deal with a broad spectrum of mental health issues, many of them choose to specialize in a specific issue or group of issues or work with a particular age group. Some of the most common mental health counselor jobs include private practice counseling, psychiatric counseling, youth counseling, and geriatric counseling.
Private practice counseling is one of the most prevalent mental health counselor jobs. This type of counselor maintains an office that their clients come to for sessions. She may see clients with many different types of mental health issues, or she may narrow her practice to certain issues such as eating disorders or social anxiety. During sessions, she helps her clients reflect on the causes and impact of their issues and helps them develop healthy strategies for addressing these issues in the future. She may sometimes hold sessions that include both the client and loved ones, who can, with the counselor’s guidance, provide the client with a deeper insight into the nature of their issues.
Some mental health counselor jobs are based in psychiatric facilities. In this type of position, the counselor typically works with facility residents who are experiencing a serious psychiatric crisis, such as a suicide attempt. Often their counseling work takes the form of group sessions, in which clients are encouraged to share ideas about their health issues with their fellow residents. She often works in coordination with staff psychiatrists and psychologists to create a multidimensional treatment approach for each resident.
Other mental health counselor jobs revolve strictly around treating children and adolescents. These young clients can suffer from many different mental health issues, including self-esteem issues and anxiety caused by family transitions such as divorce. Often, a youth counselor is based in an elementary or secondary school. The counselor may hold annual sessions with each student at the school, during which she checks for signs of mental health difficulties. If she identifies problems with any of these students, she can continue to hold regular sessions with them.
Geriatric counselors work with clients suffering from mental health issues associated with aging. This type of counselor is usually employed by an aged care facility. She may see her clients individually or she may supervise group counseling sessions. Common issues addressed in geriatric counseling include the difficult emotions that can accompany the loss of contemporaries, increasingly limited mobility, or the onset of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Another area often faced in geriatric counseling sessions is the fear of death.
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