The individual psychology of Alfred Adler is based on a holistic and phenomenological understanding of human behavior. Adlerians believe that all behavior has a purpose and occurs in a social context, noting that one’s cognitive orientation and lifestyle is created in the first few years of life and molded within the initial social setting, the family constellation. The Adlerian theory purports that humans are all social beings and therefore all behavior is socially embedded and has social meaning. Adlerian psychotherapy is a psychoeducational, present/future-oriented, and time-limited approach. The Adlerian approach is a contemporary therapy as it is cognitive behavioral, culture-sensitive/ multicultural, and integrative. The four stages of Adlerian therapy are as follows: relationship, assessment, insight and interpretation and reorientation. This is believed to be a good strategy because the Adlerian theory gives counselors an overall framework from which to use a host of other methods that might appeal to them.

Assistive technologies or devices are tools for enhancing the independent functioning of people who have physical limitations or disabilities. An assistive technology device (ATD), as initially defined in the Technology-Related Assistance of Individuals With Disabilities Act of 1988, is any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified that is used to increase or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. ATDs range from low-tech aids such as built-up handles on eating utensils to high-tech, computerized systems to help persons with disabilities live independently and enter the workforce. The goal of rehabilitation and counseling professionals is to match an individual with an ATD that will enhance the person’s capabilities and quality of life. Persons with disabilities want as much emphasis placed on their community participation as on their physical capabilities, creating as much need to change and accommodate the environment as equip the person.

This chapter provides a general overview of the cognitive behavioral history, model, and techniques and their application to counseling practice. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) originally evolved out of two traditions, the behavior therapy tradition and the psychodynamic tradition. Behavior therapy was one of the first major departures from the more traditional, psychodynamically oriented approaches to therapy. Through the use of Socratic questioning, CBT involves an ongoing assessment of the person and the problems throughout the therapy experience and is very sensitive to the idiosyncratic nature of an individual’s problems. Once cognitive, behavioral, and emotive patterns are identified for change, the CBT therapist begins to introduce a variety of focused techniques to facilitate this process. Behavioral interventions can be especially helpful in promoting change in individuals who have a harder time making elegant core belief changes through cognitive methods.

The practice of behavior therapy has many features in common with that of other forms of psychotherapy, for example, the development of a collaborative working relationship between client and therapist. Behavior therapy is distinguished by its use of particular techniques to address specified problems, by its allegiance to psychological experimentation, and by its commitment to empirical validation. In application to the treatment of anxiety and related disorders, behavior therapy drew inspiration from studies of classical conditioning and experimental neurosis. Systematic programs of gradually confronting feared situations therapeutically, in the imagination or in real life, are familiar features of contemporary behavioral practice with anxious clients. Behavioral assessment is designed to provide detailed information that focuses and directs behavioral treatment. Treatment techniques involving self-control and self-management are viable because clients can alter the contingencies affecting their own behavior.

The history of counseling is a fascinating evolutionary process, particularly how the profession developed, and how quickly it has evolved through the professionalization process during the past half century. This chapter reviews and highlights the major events that led to the development of professional counseling, including the numerous professional specialty groups that make up the family of professional disciplines in counseling that provide services to clients in diverse practice settings. One of the critical issues that continues to challenge the counseling profession and related specialty areas are professional identity and professional unification. The unique divisions within the American Counseling Association (ACA) represent areas of specialized practice and special-interest areas that relate to a broad constituency of counselors regardless of their specialty areas of practice. Examination and certification standards for the certified rehabilitation counselor (CRC) credential have been established through empirical research throughout the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification’s (CRCC) history.

The definition of career encompasses one’s vocational behavior across the life span. Although the field of career counseling is developmental in both nature and definition, there are few theories that have specifically focused on this aspect of career counseling. This chapter focuses on highlighting a few of those career development interventions that have been shown to be effective and how they can be appropriately utilized across a person’s life span. It discusses aspects of diversity that offer their own unique challenges across the life span and are currently a priority topic in career development. Career guidance techniques in the elementary school setting might include curriculum infusion such as reading reference books and storytelling, group activities such as role-playing, and, finally, community involvement activities such as field trips and inviting local businesses to the school. Career counselors need to be cognizant of sexual identity models, regardless of a person’s developmental aspect.

This chapter discusses career development theories in four different categories: personenvironment fit, developmental, social learning, and postmodern career development theories. The leading developmental career theory is Donald Super’s life span, life space theory. Super’s theory drew on a variety of disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, and developed what he called a “differential-developmental-social-phenomenological career theory". Postmodern career development theories emphasize a person’s subjective career development experience or his or her understanding of his or her career development journey as it takes place. The contextual theory views career development as dynamic, allowing for individuals to achieve meaning through their own actions within their social environment. Integrating theoretical orientations related to individual difference and individual development provides the fullest explanation for those seeking to understand the career development process. Such integration also links career development to human development, which represents an important next step in the evolution of career development theories.

Professional counselors working with children face many challenges that pose significant difficulties in behavioral and mental health treatment. Challenging behaviors in children include those behaviors that cause injury to self and others, cause property damage, interfere with the acquisition of skills, or result in isolation. There are ethical concerns that some parents may possibly reveal information to the counselor about parenting practices that may lead the counselor to suspect child abuse. Counselors can provide statements to parents about suspected child abuse-reporting laws and discuss those laws before beginning parent interviews. It is also required by counselor licensure laws that counselors disclose their philosophy of working with parents and children. The professional counselor should provide parents the opportunity to express their thoughts, feelings, and concerns regarding the reason they brought their child in for therapy. Clinicians can also assist parents in improving their children’s behaviors and performance at school.

This chapter serves as an introduction to prescribed psychiatric drugs for children and adolescents. It covers the most common disorders that require medication for children and adolescents as well as symptoms that are targeted and medication side effects. Anxiety disorders are the most common of all mental disorders and are often chronic, treatment resistant, and associated with considerable morbidity. The chapter explores the most common Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5-related psychiatric disorders children and adolescents experience as well as the most common medications used. Counselors of all disciplines can benefit from understanding not only the types of medications being prescribed but also the behaviors and cognitive thought processes believed to be treated. Counseling strategies were briefly addressed; however, counselors are encouraged to seek more in-depth information on each of these conditions and the best strategies in assisting this population.

Within rehabilitation counseling practice, clinical supervision is a process fundamental to one’s professional training and ostensibly to one’s ongoing professional development. This chapter addresses additional information relevant to current practice as it pertains to effective, ineffective, and harmful supervision as well as strategies to address the lack of training in clinical supervision, which seems to exist in the rehabilitation counseling field. This process involves individual, triadic, and group supervision formats through direct and indirect observation methods where supervisors function within acceptable ethical practices to promote counselor awareness, knowledge, and skills that result in successful rehabilitation outcomes. Although clinical supervision is an activity that, to varying degrees, each rehabilitation counselor participates in and may benefit from, we have limited understanding as to what constitutes evidence-based practice to inform the field. A long-term strategy would be to teach clinical supervision content as a separate course of clinical fieldwork for rehabilitation counselors-in-training.