Professional Identity

Professional Identity

When seeking to describe the key philosophies of the counseling profession related to the practices of wellness, resilience, and prevention and while wellness can be defined "as more than just the absent of disease", but more as a holistic perspective encompassing physical, mental and social well-being overall (ACA, 2014). It is equally important to first define the purpose of the practice of psychology and how this fits into the paradigms of treatment and patient care. In doing so, the purpose of professional counseling psychology can then be defined accordingly, as the application of implementing evidence based practices and empirically supported treatment (EST), modalities to client and patient care. This, along with the utility of applying relevant professional, personal, and real world experiences to professional practice as a means to better illustrate how combined, such practices and theories can best be utilized as instruments of therapy, designed to relieve human suffering and impact human potential for achieving wellness. As such principles of practice should always be ethically grounded in meeting the individual's need for care based on sound knowledge based practices which by example acts as a basis for establishing a counselors professional identity; regardless of professional affiliation, background or the counseling methodologies used in administering patient care (Hanna and Bemak's, 1997).

While also being charted as a profession which maintains through its own actions, an ethical stance in its continual effort towards meeting the challenges counselors routinely encounter in applying psychological philosophies to practice in the treatment of patient care as theorized. In this framework of psychological practicing, as a profession, counseling can be widely viewed as the application of treatment in providing therapeutic options that positively impacts patient's mental health and wellness. Whereby, the application of the counseling profession is exemplified through the execution of a counselor's range of knowledge, skills set and ability which identifies such licensed agents as experts in their chosen field of providing professional counseling services. Thereby, such characteristic are seen as key attributes which greatly contributes to a counselors professional identity in proving they are equipped with the tools required to administer therapeutic counseling and guidance that influences behaviors which affects positive change that results in positive patient outcomes (Hanna and Bemak's, 1997).

To this effect, there is much controversy brewing over framing the characteristics of a professional counselor in establishing professional identity. That is, in meeting the standards of excellence established by the APA and in meeting the expectation of peers, whose aim is to differentiates the role of counselors, psychologist and psychiatrist; considering, each are thought by some to embody a separate set of evidence based practices which identifies each according to their own areas of expertise. From this perspective, professional counselors are said to be best identified by the characters of counseling which are garnering in best practices associated with the wellness model, which is based on theoretical and conceptual development. In addition to using proven practices which are found under the auspices of other helping professions as theorized in clinical psychology and psychiatry (Hanna and Bemak's, 1997).

In this respect, professional counseling is said to be best practiced using a counseling-based wellness model; that is, a more holistic-pragmatic approach to patient care in achieving patient wellness (Myers and Sweeney's, 2008). Through empirically based findings, one model in particular has been met with promising results; that is, the Wheel of Wellness. Under such a paradigm of care, counselors utilize a whole person approach to care in treating the whole person, mind, body and spirit and not just the symptoms of a patients mental health issues and concerns. Within the scope of practice using the Wheel of Wellness, professional counselors generally seek to find the correlation of health, quality of life and longevity, which are found to be key factors in determining patient adherence to treatment and outcomes of patient care. This, along with the use of Adlerian Individual Psychology, which is also used as an organizing principle in charting the relationships of the 12 components of wellness, which are illustrated within the wheel (Myers and Sweeney's, 2008). Through recent revisions, the wheel was recreated and now has 17 components which depicts the interaction of internal and external forces which impacts holistic health and wellness, with spirituality being highlighted in the center of the wheel as the most important characteristic of wellbeing. As the main theme establishing a sense of meaning, religious systems of beliefs and practices, spirituality illuminates from the core of the Wheel of Wellness with a spectrum of 12 spokes representing the life task as defined as; "self-direction, sense of worth, sense of control, realistic beliefs, emotional awareness and coping, sense of humor, nutrition, exercise, self-care, stress management, gender identity, and cultural identity" (Myers and Sweeney's, 2008). Through therapeutic practices, the spokes are said to influence self-regulation and direct behaviors and responses to Adlerian life task, involving work-life balance, social continuity, bonding-friendship and interconnectedness relating to intimacy and love. The application of the wellness model offers professional counselors the benefit of also taking into account how ecologically driven life forces, images depicted by media and government entities, culture and lifestyle can too impact health and well-being (Myers and Sweeney's, 2008).

Therefore, professional counselors practicing in all capacities, be it, clinical social work, marriage and family therapy, or clinical and counseling psychology, find more commonalties in their professional identity than differences (Hanna and Bemak's, 1997). As do experimental psychologists, psychometricians, behaviorist, educational psychologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists who use pharmacotherapy verses psychotherapy, each professional counselor realizes how imperative it is to view each patient as individuals and administer care accordingly in meeting patient's specific needs, issues and concerns. Professional counselors also are mindful of how sudden life events can impact a patient's ability to achieve wellness and that it is important to understanding how change in one area of life can have a profound effect on how individuals respond to treatment which can negatively or positively