This graduate-level, introductory textbook provides instructors and students with a comprehensive overview of the profession of clinical mental health counseling (CMHC). Designed to cover the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) 2016 Standards and to provide an inclusive overview of the work of professional counselors, the book offers an in-depth exploration of the professional knowledge, skills, current issues, and dynamic trends in professional counseling that are essential parts of the educational journey of emerging clinicians. It provides readers with practical, applicable, real-world information upon which they can build through-out their programs of study and practice. Issues such as strength-based approaches, the various settings in which clinical mental health counselors may practice, record keeping and documentation, advocacy, professional roles, third-party payers and managed care, and self-care and professional development are vitally important to new counselors, and these subjects often are glanced over in an information-packed curriculum. In addition, the book covers the topics of crisis, disaster, and trauma, which constitute relatively new areas of emphasis within the CACREP Standards. Conceptually, it book looks at the history, roles, functions, settings, and contemporary issues of counseling through the lens of human ecological and integrated systems-of-care approaches. Unique to this particular textbook, and in juxtaposition to an ecological perspective of the individual, a focus on integrated systems of care in clinical mental health endeavors provides students with knowledge and skills that can help them to move seamlessly into the current world of work as clinical mental health counselors. The textbook is comprised of five sections, spanning the following clusters of CMHC-relevant information: (a) Introduction to Professional Counseling and Clinical Mental Health Counseling, (b) Working With Clients, (c) Practice Issues, (d) Working Within Systems, and (e) Client-Care and Self-Care Practices.

This book is useful to a wide range of readers and can readily serve as a core textbook or resource to explain the history, development, and current practice of rehabilitation counselors (RCs) within the context of the contemporary practice of counseling. Although most clearly useful to counselors-in-training in an introductory course, people think that those RCs at the doctoral level or already in practice interested in the field and its broader positioning and potential will find this book appealing. The book consists of 22 chapters that are divided into parts that emphasize different themes important to understanding both the people and types of situations with which RCs work and the specific roles and skill sets that describe professional practice. It consists of basic information about the structure and professional practice of rehabilitation counseling, and serves the important role of introducing the readers to the RC’s most important partner in the counseling process, the person with a disability. The book also focuses on the professional practice of rehabilitation counseling and introduces the new work in the field that sharpens the emphasis on evidence-based practices and research utilization in the field. It describes in detail, the specific functions that constitute the work of rehabilitation counseling: assessment, counseling, forensic and indirect services, clinical case management and case coordination, psychiatric rehabilitation, advocacy, and career development, vocational behavior, and work adjustment of individuals with disabilities. Further, the book introduces the competencies that provide the types of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that must infuse the practice of rehabilitation counseling because of their pervasive and overarching importance in all aspects of practice.

The book stands as a primary text in disability studies on the family and a supporting text in applications with rehabilitation counseling. The emphasis on community opens its value to practitioners, managers, and policy advocates. The first part of the book makes the case from philosophy to praxis for an alternative to current rehabilitation counseling paradigms. Nothing of our current practice is lost, but much is gained in its translation into a social model that places community at the center of a client-centered practice. This approach creates the appropriate space to bring rehabilitation counseling and the family together. Read in synthesis, the first five chapters present the framework for a community-based approach to rehabilitation counseling beyond the family. The second part of the book recounts the family disability experience across disability contexts. Each chapter provides a unique profile that maps the current relationship between rehabilitation counseling and the family experience. These chapters can be read alone as the state of practice and a guide to current rehabilitation counseling interventions. The final part of the book considers a sampling of the professional implications and considerations of moving forward with a community-based model. It explores cultural perspectives on disability and their relationships to family from the vantage point of four established collective identities: Hispanic Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.