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What is the role of a counsellor in relation to mental ill health?
Counsellors provide support and help for people who have been signposted to them. It may be via an employer assistance program in which the employer has brought in the services of a therapy resource and can offer their employees counselling and that counselling would be confidential. It would not be fed back to their employer. Or you may get someone have got your name from the internet or from a directory or even via the GP. If you go to the GP with issues of anxiety, stress, depression or any other thing that you are not coping with, the GP may well recommend therapy, alongside some sort of medication or even therapy on its own. As a counselor, you can find a way of helping your client through difficulty. You are not there to offer advice and say, "Do this, do that and all will be well." You are there to help the person find their own solution to what is bothering them.
If it is a short-term contract, it may be on a more practical basis. You may help the client to find a coping strategy for what is bothering them. You may help them find further information on their condition, or you could find them a local resource for them to attend. If it is long-term work then you are more likely to look at influences from the past about how they are affecting their day-to-day living, but it is always about helping the client find their own resolution.
So it is not possible to say that if someone is experiencing a particular type of mental ill health that six weeks is going to be all that they need. So it is always. It is very, very individual.
In that six weeks though you could help the person understand where they are at, how it is affecting their life, and maybe find some simple things that will make life easier for them. It would be unrealistic to expect that that person would be, want for a better word, cured of whatever they are seeking help for, but certainly, you could help support them. It is so important that whoever you are seeing feel supported that there is somewhere they can talk in a non-judgmental confidential environment that will really move them along from where they are when they first come.
