The Ten Commandments for Community Mental Health Education

Ten guidelines for effective community mental health education were presented at a mental health center as a part of the staff training and development program.     

What Client Behaviors Make Counselors Angry? An Exploratory Study

Counselors may feel anger when clients do not behave according to their expectations of what is a good client. Client resistance, client impositions, verbal attacks on the counselor, and overinvolvement by the counselor in client dynamics seem to be relatively common occurrences that annoy counselors. Possible counselor responses to these feelings are discussed.     

Some Challenges of Integrating Sexual Orientations Into Counselor Training and Research

The field of counseling currently lacks an integrative approach on issues of sexual orientations in training and research. Despite changes in social and political realities and calls within the field for attention to these areas, little response has been forthcoming. Some of the challenges and difficulties involved in integrating sexual orientations into counselor training curricula and research are discussed. Suggestions are presented to help professionals gain a better understanding of sexual orientation issues for research and practice.     

Searching for Cognitive Processes in the Cultivation Effect Adult and Adolescent Samples in the United States and Australia

Research on the cultivation hypothesis has focused on whether relationships between television viewing and social reality beliefs truly exist or are artifacts. There is very little evidence about what cognitive processes allow viewers to construct television-biased beliefs. The present study tests two possible processes: First, that perceptions of the television world serve as an intermediate step between fragmented incidental learning from television and beliefs about the real world and second, that beliefs closely linked to television content are an intermediate step in implying more general values and beliefs. These two hypotheses were tested in one adult and three adolescent samples, two in the United States and two in Australia. Across a range of cultivation questions, the basic cultivation result generally replicated that heavy viewers had beliefs about the world that appeared influenced by television. However, neither process hypothesis was supported. Although the null findings on the first hypothesis do not rule out construction from learned fragments, findings on the second hypothesis contradict cultivation's second-order effect. “Close” beliefs and their implied counterparts were unrelated, and cultivation relationships for these implied variables occurred only for those with real-world biased “dose” beliefs. Exploration of this result demonstrated that cultivation of both kinds of beliefs occurred more of ten for adolescents with high academic skills, suggesting that if cultivation occurs, it is a more active and intellectually demanding process than previously proposed.     

UNIFORM MESSAGES AND HABITUAL VIEWING: UNNECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS IN SOCIAL REALITY EFFECTS

Gerbner and his co-authors argue that commercial television content is essentially uniform in its symbolic messages about societal values and that television viewing is essentially habitual (ritual) rather than selective. Their claim that these two assumptions are essential to cultivation analysis is challenged here. Viewing crime-adventure, cartoon, and game programs is related to two violence-related social reality beliefs, while viewing of other content types is not. And based on the intercorrelations of viewing various content types, it seems that some types of content are viewed more or less habitually. Finally, an indicator of selecting to view or not view a given content type—watching more or less of that type than predicted based on the individual's total viewing—is quite differently related to social reality beliefs than is viewing itself. This provides support for considering cultivation effects as actual effects rather than the product of third variables or of reverse causation. Overall, then, the uniform message and ritual viewing assumptions are found flawed, but discarding them serves to strengthen rather than weaken the cultivation hypothesis.     

Forgiveness and Reconciliation: The Importance of Understanding How They Differ

The concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation are clarified and discussed. The differences between forgiveness and reconciliation are illustrated, guidelines for how counselors can avoid confusing them are given, and a case study is used to illustrate the differences between forgiveness and reconciliation and when each is appropriate. Implications for the helping profession and the well-being of clients are discussed.     

A Test of Bowen Theory: Emotional Reactivity and Psychological Distress in a Clinical Sample

Even if rarely discussed in the current systemic literature, “reframing” remains a key concept and technique in systemic family therapy. With reference to Baudelaire's poem entitled “The Frame,” we attempt to highlight and revisit reframing attitudes and interventions in clinical practice with families.