Technical and Conceptual Skills for Mental Health Professionals - Softcover

For courses in counseling skills and techniques in Counseling, Psychology, and Social Work Programs. This fresh new text will help future mental health professionals develop the competence they need in technical and conceptual skills, while learning to successfully integrate the two groups of skills. This book effectively meshes teaching of the traditional technical skills (e.g., open questions, reflection of feeling, reinforcement, modification of cognitions) with the long-neglected conceptual skills (e.g., case formulation, mental status examination, diagnosis, goal setting, treatment planning). Readers will learn to conceptualize their work and to gain a deeper understanding of their clients as well as to select and apply effective interventions. Both general skills such as building a collaborative and therapeutic alliance demonstrating multicultural competence and specific skills such as developing a genogram and conducting an intake interview are presented in this text. Material is arranged by skill type (technical or conceptual) and according to the emphasis of the treatment approaches that make greatest use of those skills. Both skills and corresponding treatment approaches are clearly organized according to the four pillars of the BETA framework (background, emotions, thoughts, actions) developed by the author.

Linda Seligman has been a professor in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, for more than 20 years. She served as co-director of the Doctoral Program in Education, coordinator of the Counseling and Development Program, Associate Chair, and head of the Community Agency Counseling Program. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and Walden University. Dr. Seligman received a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University. Her research interests include diagnosis and treatment planning, counseling people with cancer and other chronic and life-threatening illnesses, and career counseling. She has written nine books, including Systems, Strategies, and Skills of Counseling and Psychotherapy; Selecting Effective Treatments; Diagnosis and Treatment Planning in Counseling; Developmental Career Counseling and Assessment; and Promoting a Fighting Spirit: Psychotherapy for Cancer Patients, Survivors, and Their Families. She also has written more than 75 professional articles and book chapters. In addition, she has lectured throughout the United States as well as internationally on diagnosis and treatment planning and is a recognized expert on that subject. Dr. Seligman has extensive clinical experience in a broad range of mental health settings, including drug and alcohol treatment programs, university counseling settings, psychiatric hospitals, correctional facilities, and counseling programs for children and adolescents. She currently has a private practice in Fairfax, Virginia. Dr. Seligman has served as editor of the Journal of Mental Health Counseling and as president of the Virginia Association of Mental Health Counselors. In 1986, her colleagues at George Mason University selected her as a Distinguished Professor, and in 1990, the American Mental Health Counselors Association designated her as Researcher of the Year.