Clinical mental health counselors, like doctors and lawyers, practice in specialty areas. These areas are specific to client issues or populations for which the counselor has had advanced clinical training and experience. Often, counselors enter a training program with an idea of the client issues or populations for which they have a passion. These specialty areas include, but are not limited to, drug and alcohol treatment, eating disorders, trauma, crisis management, depression, and/or anxiety. You might not know what area of counseling you’d like to practice, and that’s OK! Feel free to pick a topic that is most interesting to you at this point in your training.

For this Discussion, you will explore various client issues and analyze a video concerning a client population or issue that interests you. Your analysis, and the resulting dialogue with your colleagues, will help you as you work to determine the client issue or population with which you would like to specialize.

To Prepare:

• Review Section 3, “Client Issues and Advocacy,” from the Erford course text.
  • In addition to the assigned reading (Chapter 8), select one additional chapter from Section 3 to review and incorporate into this discussion: Chapters 7, 9, 10, 11, or 12.
• Search the Walden Library and choose a video that demonstrates a client population or client issue that interests you. Think about why you selected this video. The video should align with the chapter you have selected.
• Also, as you review the video, notice what the clinical mental health counselor does during the session.
• After reviewing the video, reflect on anything that surprised you in the video.
• Think about any insights you gained or conclusions you drew about client issues and this population from the video and the chapter, noting specifically if anything reinforced your desire to work with this client issue or population.

By Day 3

Post the following:

• The title and a brief description of the video you selected.
• Explain why this client issue and/or population interests you.
• Explain any insights you gained or conclusions you drew about working with that client issue or population.
• Finally, explain how this video and chapter may have confirmed or challenged your interest in working with this client issue or population, and explain why.

References:

Erford, B. T. (Ed.). (2018). Orientation to the counseling profession: Advocacy, ethics, and essential professional foundations (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

• Chapter 8, “Mental Health and Rehabilitation Counseling” (pp. 249–268)