Psychosocial counseling
Psychosocial counseling refers to a professional type of counseling (British English: Counseling , American English: Counseling ) that provides preventive and development-oriented support to clients in their various areas and phases of life, taking into account their personal resources, so that they can develop specific skills relevant to everyday life. With the increasing complexity of all areas of life and the psychosocial aspects, counseling in the psychosocial area is becoming more and more widespread. In comparison, therapy is more of a curative intervention that includes treatment, healing, and coping with illness. The type of counseling is now increasingly being used to care for cancer patients and their relatives and is regularly promoted by the German Cancer Aid Foundation through nationwide funding of “psychosocial cancer counseling centers”.
definition
Psychosocial counseling operates in a world that is constantly changing and which demands flexibility from modern societies and their members more quickly and more frequently with regard to social integration and individual coping with life.
Psychosocial counseling is shown in all areas of life, all phases of life and all contexts of life as a support offer for individuals, groups, organizations and institutions.
It is the task of psychosocial counseling to accompany people in challenging life contexts or situations and in decisive stages of development and life crises, to provide them with informative, preventive and development support in their respective life context and to give them orientation, planning, decision-making and coping assistance their personal and social coping resources. Psychosocial includes an image of people and society that always considers individual psychological and social well-being in the context of existing socio-cultural living and environmental conditions.
The term counseling is not protected in the German-speaking area, unlike the term counseling in the USA. This also applies to the specification “psychosocial counseling”: providers do not have to prove any specific competence.
Psychosocial cancer counseling centers
The priority program “Psychosocial Cancer Advice Centers” of the German Cancer Aid was expanded in 2017. According to the annual report, it provided around 9.8 million euros in donations for projects to improve psychosocial and psycho-oncological care. The funds went to 18 psychosocial cancer counseling centers nationwide. In 2018, these include institutions of the Bavarian Cancer Society eV Munich, the Hessian Cancer Society eV Frankfurt am Main and the Cancer Society Rhineland-Palatinate eV
Advice offers
Psychosocial counseling takes place in private practices or institutions on the basis of an agreement in different counseling fields such as career, education and employment, personality, youth, education, partnership, family, migrant or migration counseling, counseling in health and Addiction problems or grief work. It is carried out in the form of individual, couple, family or group counseling.
Psychosocial emergency care, for example in the form of telephone counseling
Consultation process
The focus of psychosocial counseling is personal, client-oriented discussions with those seeking advice. Their frequent concerns are challenging developments or drastic changes in life, the desire to develop their own personality or the improvement of social integration. The counselor's goal is to focus these problems and to support those seeking advice in dealing with them and in their personal development.
Counselors in the psychosocial area design the counseling process in relation to the situation, individually and creatively and taking into account the social and cultural environment of their clients. They promote the personal responsibility of those seeking advice and support their own efforts to further develop their behavior and experience patterns and to improve their personal well-being. It is becoming increasingly important not to work mainly problem-oriented, but increasingly resource-oriented.
Theoretical foundations
The theoretical foundations of psychosocial counseling are based on concepts from psychological schools such as individual psychology according to Alfred Adler , representatives of ego psychology such as Erik Erikson , the existential analysis founded by Viktor E. Frankl around 1930 , the gestalt therapy developed by Fritz Perls and humanistic psychology whose founders and developers include Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers . Also of importance is the systemic theory, which began in the United States and which produced important family therapists such as Virginia Satir and Paul Watzlawick . Since the 1990s in particular, body-oriented methods have gained increasing influence in connection with neuroscientific research results. Consulting theorists such as John Mc Leod, Ursel Sickendiek, Frank Engel and Frank Nestmann provide an essential discourse on the various concepts, models and disciplines of consulting.
The first counseling services arose in Central Europe in the 1920s, including in fields such as education, social work, pastoral care and medicine. Significant influences also came from the sciences outside of these practical fields, for example from anthropology (see Gregory Bateson on communication ), sociology (see Niklas Luhmann on social systems ) or neurosciences (see Antonio Damasio , Gerald Hüther , Manfred Spitzer on brain development , Learning and decision-making processes). The concepts and practice of today's psychosocial counseling are therefore based on an interdisciplinary basis.
Consulting approaches and concepts
Psychosocial counseling is based on theory and deals with different developmental tasks and multifactorial problem and conflict situations. This understanding of consulting is based on a socio-scientific and interdisciplinary well-founded concept of action that is differentiated according to the field of activity and task. An advisory approach (or procedure) is understood as a sufficiently consistent, comprehensive, detailed, clearly formulated approach. The variety of procedures is great today. This has essentially to do with the fact that people and their social environments are multiform and can therefore be addressed in very different ways. Learning and change processes can be initiated and supported in many ways.
It has therefore become established in recent years that well-trained consultants are thoroughly familiar with and can apply a certain procedure and, moreover, develop an individual concept for their specific offers, on the basis of which they design and reflect on their work.
Education and qualifications
Consulting has become a common offer today and the need for regulation is increasing accordingly. Schools and institutions have come together to form associations in order to regulate and control the field of psychosocial counseling by means of uniform professional standards.
For this purpose, the umbrella organization “Swiss Society for Consulting SGfB” was founded in Switzerland in 2006. Since 2014, the SGfB has been organizing and conducting professional examinations for consultants in the psychosocial field with a federal diploma on behalf of the Swiss state.
literature
- Jürgen Beushausen: Learn advice. Basics of psychosocial counseling and social therapy for study and practice. UTB u. Budrich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-8252-4578-8 .
- Heike Schnoor: Psychosocial counseling in social and rehabilitation education. Kohlhammer, 2006, ISBN 3-17-019297-3 .
- Anke Rohde, Kirsten Wassermann: Prenatal diagnostics and psychosocial counseling - from practice for practice. Schattauer, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7945-2613-0 .
- Frank Engel, Frank Nestmann, Ursel Sickendiek: Counseling - An introduction to socio-educational and psychosocial counseling approaches. Beltz Juventa, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7799-0755-8 .
- Wilhelm Körner, Gülcan Irdem, Ullrich Bauer: Psycho-social counseling for migrants. Kohlhammer, 2013, ISBN 978-3-17-021410-1 .
- Heike Schnoor: Psychosocial counseling in the field of tension between society, institution, profession and individual. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013, ISBN 978-3-525-46267-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ V. Bamler, J. Werner, F. Nestmann: Psychosocial counseling. In: Developments and Perspectives, Resonanzen-Journal. 01/2013
- ↑ 50 million euros for young cancer researchers. German Cancer Aid, July 4, 2018, accessed on August 2, 2018.
- ^ V. Bamler, J. Werner, F. Nestmann: Psychosocial counseling. In: Developments and Perspectives, Resonanzen-Journal. 01/2013
- ^ F. Nestmann: transition advice . In: Handbook transitions. Beltz Juventa, 2013.
- ^ V. Bamler, J. Werner, F. Nestmann: Psychosocial counseling. In: Developments and Perspectives, Resonanzen-Journal. 01/2013
- ↑ Annual Report German Cancer Aid 2017. pp. 43, 46 and 47.
- ^ PSNV Links (crisis intervention & emergency pastoral care). In: www.krisenintervention-psnv.de. Retrieved November 28, 2015 .
- ↑ A strong community | Telephone pastoral care Germany. In: www.telefonseelsorge.de. Retrieved November 28, 2015 .
- ↑ Psychosocial counseling. In: Consulting understanding. www.sgfb.ch
- ↑ Psychosocial counseling. In: Consulting understanding. www.sgfb.ch