In this assignment, you will investigate a topic of your interest that is relevant to professional counseling. Consider choosing a topic appropriate to your area of specialization. The topic may address a specific population, a disorder or diagnosis, a treatment method or technique, a current professional issue, or a social justice issue in counseling. The literature review is designed to increase your knowledge of the topic and improve clinical mental health counseling (CHMC) practice or service delivery. Information included in the literature review should be current and scholarly for it to be relevant.
Scenario:
You have been hired as a member of a research team at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). You were hired because of your expertise on the topic, and your role is to conduct a literature review on the proposed topic. The research team is relying on you to educate them on the relevance of the topic to counseling; its background, current trends, statistics, issues/challenges, and improvements/changes; and the current research findings on the topic. Your literature would be the foundation upon which the research study will be conducted.
Tasks:
• Access a minimum of 10 appropriate peer-reviewed articles in the Argosy University online library resources.
• Based on the articles, develop an introduction on the background of the topic.
• Analyze all articles and describe the key themes that emerge across the selected articles.
• Synthesize the material and summarize the patterns of similarities and differences regarding how each of the authors has presented each theme.
• Based on your analysis of the literature, conclude by evaluating the impact of your chosen topic to CMHC practices, and explain how
you plan to continue developing in this area.
Your final product will be an 8- to 10-page Microsoft Word document written in APA format, using at least 10 scholarly sources. Your paper should be written in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; and display accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
In this module, you learned that presenting a collaborative, unified front is the strategy for placing counseling on par with other therapeutic professions. You also learned that technology is being integrated into nearly every aspect of counseling although there is some reluctance to fully embrace it. In addition, valuable information that will help you to develop a strong professional counselor identity was addressed.
Now, armed with the knowledge of the origins of counseling and of the future direction of the profession, you need to decide how to become involved in professional advocacy efforts.