Counseling is the means by which one
person helps another through purposeful conversation; Counseling is a method of
identifying practical solution to an identified problem
.
Common Problems are Personality
problems such as Family conflicts and Personal problems, Educational problems
such as Lack of motivation and Reading difficulties, Vocational problems such
as Difference between interests and aptitude, Financial problems such as need for
self support at school or college and Health problems such as Psycho-somatic
disorders (Insomnia) (Biswalo ,P. M., 1996).
Students are faced with many problems when
they at school such as forced marriage, dismissal at school, drop at school,
fighting at school, truancy at school, drug abuse and alcohol, financial issues
and poor performance in academic matters. The importance of doing counseling for students include the following,
Counseling
can act as an early intervention strategy that create awareness in the students
to look at their problems from different angles and manage their academic, emotional and behavioral
difficulties and be more successful both in school and at home. Early referral
can prevent problems in attitudes, behavior and promote mental health.
Prepare
students for the challenges through academic, career, and personal or social
development. Students are highly provided with the experience of going to be
useful in their society (ies). That is, promoting personal awareness and
consciousness over what is doing. Also this prepares the students to be useful
to their fellow peers and other people by providing counseling to them.
Facilitates
career exploration and development. This enable the student to walk on the interested
in academic matters which will enable suitable carrier choices, that will be an
appropriate carrier in the future. Through counseling, a student can decide in
which subject he or she is competent. For example, due to the performance of
physics, chemistry and biology, a student can be advised to study medicine to
develop his or her career.
Develops
decision-making and problem solving skills. Due to knowledge and skills
provided to the students. The students gain some knowledge and skills that help
them to solve some problems that face them and that face the community in
general. In addition, it helps the students to decide positively over what is
facing them.
Assists
in acquiring knowledge of self and others.
Because of counseling, a student understands that people are different
from each other because of their personality’s differences. By realizing
environmental and genetic operating factors. Due to this a student gain
experience on how to live with his or her fellow students without disturbing
the personality of others.
Enhances
personal development. Counseling helps students to develop personal development
in their general life span development this is because it provides information
about physical development, moral development, and cognitive development of a
person in the way that they can handle matters in the society.
Broadens
knowledge of our changing world. Counseling it provides exposure to what is
going on in the world, for example by exposing a person on the pros and cons of
the dynamic culture and environmental changes, how to cope and adjust on those
changes by applying best solving skill of the changes.
Encourages
facilitative, co-operative peer interactions. Counseling encourages the
students to be co-operative in their works and more interactively in their
social context. This means counseling provides positive attitudes and behavior
the social context whereby a person has to live with his or her fellow students
as one community hence everything is happening within the society has to be
solved as a community although there some problems that can be addressed
individually.
Adolescents, growing up into adulthood make one-experience
problems in various domains of life including personal, social and
educational problems. Stereotypes and misconceptions related to adolescence
period have given rise to various problems among the adolescents. Some of the
critical issues include substance abuse, teenage pregnancy and sexually
transmitted disease and AIDS, violence, crime among others. The following are
the importance of doing counseling in adolescent;
Learning to stop bad behavior that lead
us into negative outcomes, when there is a group of adolescents means there are
a lot of things arise to them like trying sexual intercourse without
understanding the impact of it like sexual transmitted diseases, such as HIV or
AIDS, not only that but also it can lead to unwanted pregnancy . so counseling
is there so as to make sure that those
bad things stopped, to misunderstanding and
immoral behavior in the society.
Building
better relationship, through counseling adolescent become aware with building
various relationship, like adolescent themselves adolescent with their family
and other member of their society like elders, the fact is that counseling play
a big role to help adolescent to fit in the society.
Repair
the damage, in the sense that where adolescents do the mistakes, through
counseling may help to correct themselves to change their behavior. For
instance, not to engage in drug abuse, stealing and other immoral behavior
which are not acceptable in the society.
Learning
to stop adolescent violence, counseling as a branch of psychology gives clear
ways on how to deal with domestic violence by using various mechanisms such as
conflict management and resolution. This help adolescent to stay away from any violence
that can lead to negative impacts on the society.
Families are much more than groups of people who share the same
genes or the same address. They should be a source of love and support. This
does not mean that everyone gets along all the time. Conflicts are a part of
family life. Many things can lead to conflict, such as illness, disability,
addiction, job loss, school problems, and marital issues. Listening to each
other and working to resolve conflicts are important in strengthening the
family. The following are importance of counseling in family;
It reduces the chance of
problems becoming worse, and relationships drifting, becoming damaged, or
ending in divorce. Research has found that professional counseling improves
relationships and the physical and mental health of family members is
significantly improved.
It builds strong, healthy, and
happy families. Premarital counseling is another great benefit to building a
successful marriage and family. It is never too late or too soon to get help
that can improve your life. Counseling has many benefits
It
can be effective in treating mental health concerns that impact the family as a
whole, such as depression, substance abuse, chronic illness, and food issues,
or everyday concerns, like communication problems, interpersonal conflict, or
behavioral problems in children and adolescents.
It
helps to promote understanding and collaboration among family members in order
to solve the problems of one or more individuals. For example, if a child is
having social and academic problems, therapy will focus on the family patterns
that may contribute to the child's acting out, rather than evaluating the
child's behavior alone. As the family uncovers the source of the problem, they
can learn to support the child and other family members and work proactively on
minimizing or altering the conditions that contribute to the child's unwanted
behavior.
Old people in the society have been
experiencing different problems that are either influenced by their age or
society around them, these are physical and emotional health Social isolation
and participation, Access to appropriate services, financial limitations, planning
for the future and Accommodation. The following are advantages of doing
counseling in the old people;
It
helps a person to have an ability to cope and adjust with the environment
changes. Old people most of them find themselves fail to cope with the
situation this is because they do lack people who can direct them on what they
think it can be more useful in their lives. Therefore after counseling old
people can understand that are most and very important group in the society.
It
helps the old people to develop the sense of awareness and independent in their
societies. Counseling helps the old people to change their mind that they are
old now each and everything will be done for them. There are encouraged to
perform either some minimal business in order to boost their lives and be
independent.
Counseling
to old people helps a person to promote health behavior. That it enhances the
behavior of loving their body morphology by advising them to left the bad
behaviors they had at the previous time like smoking, and other dangerous
behavior.
It
helps old people to increases confidence and discourages the negative ideas.
For example, some of the old people think that being an old person it means you
cannot do anything and hence you are there waiting to die. This negative
perception makes them to be useless people in the society and hence they cannot
engage in any economic activities. Therefore by counseling them it will enable
them to be confident with the situation they have.
Drug or Substance abuse
can lead to substance dependence or addiction when both quantity and rate of
use increase. People who experience drug or alcohol addiction feel unable to
control the impulse to use, and they often experience withdrawal symptoms in
the sudden absence of the substance. Alcoholism, for example, occurs when
people become chemically dependent on alcohol, and those who are addicted may
become ill if they suddenly stop drinking. People may also feel psychologically
dependent on a substance and continue to use it, particularly under stressful
circumstances or to alleviate other psychological problems. Some people
are unaware or deny that they have a problem with addiction, and sometimes a
person’s struggle with drug and alcohol abuse remains hidden from loved ones.
The importances of counseling to this group include;
It
helps a person to have better health. Taking drugs is mostly dangerous to our
health such as frequent sickness and remain unhealthy person. When a person
quit from using drugs it will enable him or her to be healthier because of
letting the things that makes him or her to fall under unhealthy situation.
It
helps a person to have new friends that are not involved with drugs or alcohol.
This is because a person uses to interact with people who are seemed to have
the same characteristic from him or her that is leaving bad friends who let him
or her into the use of drugs.
It
helps a person to have fewer symptoms of mental health problems. That is, when
a person is in serious use of drug abuse automatically his or her mentally
capacity can be illogical especially in solving problems ,sometimes a person
can undergo crazy when the problem persist. But when a person will be treated
it can help him or her to experience some few mental health and when continue
to receive counseling it can treat his or her problem.
It
can help a person to improve your relationships with friends and family.
Quitting from using drug use can help a person to be respected in both family
and social at large because he or she will be in the position of contributing
some valuable points to his or her
fellow people. The lost trust from his or her fellow people comes again
hence good relationship with other people including family.
It
helps a person to be less likely to be around dangerous people or situations.
Being having intensive counseling over the certain behavior a person realize
that, the certain place or friend lead me into undergoing a certain behavior.
When a person will understand such kind areas will make him or her to change
some places that were seemed to be the causative agent of using drugs hence
become less to be around dangerous people or situation.
Therefore,
doing counseling in these groups of people is very much important because it
helps in changing the behavior of the people from negative to positive view.
Example due to counseling a person can be in the position of understanding his
or her group of behavior and decide now where has to be. In summary to that
counseling should be done in the sense that it should not discourage positive
behavior and build conflicts within a person by himself and society in general.
REFERENCES
Biswalo
P. M. (1996). An introduction to guidance
and counseling. Dar es Salaam: DUP
Myers,
D. G. (1990). Social psychology. New
York: McGraw-Hill
Santrock
J. W., (2006). Life span Development.
Boston: McGraw-Hill
Steinglass,
P. (1984). Family systems theory and therapy: A clinical application of general
Systems theory. London:
Chapman and Hall publishers.
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