How person-centred counselling trainers understand and experience their role in the current British context

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study into the experience of person-centred training from the viewpoint of the trainer. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was the adopted approach. The researcher conducted a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with five person-centred trainers with experience across a range of settings. The findings demonstrate the commitment of person-centred trainers to a relational approach with the facilitation of individual potential at its heart. The intrinsically rewarding nature of the role is highlighted alongside its substantial demands. Participants demonstrated a primary identification with themselves as counsellor trainers rather than academics and some lack of reconciliation with current developments within counselling.     

Psychological Trait Resilience Within Ecological Systems Theory: The Resilient Systems Scales

This project describes the development of the Resilient Systems Scales, created to address conceptual and methodological ambiguities in assessing the ecological systems model of resilience. Across a number of samples (total N = 986), our findings suggest that the Resilient Systems Scales show equivalence to a previously reported assessment (Maltby, Day, &; Hall, 2015 Maltby, J., Day, L., &; Hall, S. (2015). Refining trait resilience: Identifying engineering, ecological, and adaptive facets from extant measures of resilience. PLoS ONE, 10(7), e0131826. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0131826[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in demonstrating the same factor structure, adequate intercorrelation between the 2 measures of resilience, and equivalent associations with personality and well-being. The findings also suggest that the Resilient Systems Scales demonstrate adequate test–retest reliability, compare well with other extant measures of resilience in predicting well-being, and map, to varying degrees, onto positive expression of several cognitive, social, and emotional traits. The findings suggest that the new measure can be used alongside existing measures of resilience, or singly, to assess positive life outcomes within psychology research.     

The experiences of person-centred counsellors working with suicidal clients online through the medium of text

ABSTRACT

In this study, we attempt to provide an understanding of the experiences of four UK-based person-centred counsellors working with suicidal clients online using text-based therapies and the impact of their clients’ suicidal ideation upon their “way of being”. The counsellors were selected purposively; each was working as a person-centred counsellor online, was encountering suicidal ideation in their clients, and was a member of a professional organisation. A narrative approach was taken, using unstructured interviews and a stanza format of representation. We found that participants had developed a way of being online that may be distinct from their in-person practice. Challenges included being more directive, lacking physical presence, lacking confidence in assessing risk and questions about empathic understanding. Working online with risk raises specific challenges for person-centred practitioners in line with what is indicated in the little relevant research currently already available.