Question

Imagine you are a licensed, practicing counselor. Identify a problem that may be presented by a client in therapy. This could be a problem that you (or someone you know) have experienced, or a common problem among people seeking therapy.

State which of the following counseling approaches you would use to treat the problem with which you have been presented:

Psychoanalytic

Alderian

Existential

Person-Centered

Gestalt

Behavior

Cognitive-Behavioral

Reality Therapy

Justify your choice of that particular approach as a treatment for the problem the client has presented.

Integrate at least one current finding related to your chosen treatment approach from peer-reviewed research published in the last five years in your paper.

Explain any potential ethical conflicts or considerations that could arise given this particular problem and your chosen approach.

Answer 1

The problem cited in this case is that of drug abuse. A teenager has got into drugs after being introduced once by one of his peers. As a result of socialisation, the episodes of drug intake increased, which later turned into addiction. Though he wants to get rid of this problem, his addiction as reached to the level where he cannot control it.

The therapy used in this case would be cognitive behavioural therapy. This had been used by the therapists so that it would prevent relapse of any of the drinking or abusive behaviors. This theory states that when there are maladaptive behaviors in a person such as alcohol or substance abuse, there is an important role of social learning. This has been seen in the provided case as well. These individuals will be able to identify the problems in their behavior and would want to change them. This therapy would be used so that the patient will be learning self control as well as monitor the cravings that they have been having.

In this case, the patient realises that their biggest problem is their cravings, and thus, the work of the counsellor would be to identify those decision points of cravings and try to develop strategies so that these cravings and the situations where control is lost could be avoided or modified by behavior.

The choice is justified since the problem is with behavior of the person and Behavioral modification could prevent cravings.