Counselling is becoming ever-more recognised as a valuable resource for a strong and healthy community, and for creating happy, well-adjusted people.
As we increasingly understand the tremendous value of counselling work, the profession is expanding – in fact, there are now more than 31,000 counsellors working across Australia. So there is plenty of scope and many opportunities for you to have a meaningful impact in the lives around you.
The stereotypes from American movies of ‘the couch’ and ‘So tell me your Problem’ are just a fraction of the work that counsellors are actually doing. While counsellors are very helpful at dealing with problems and mental health concerns, they are also vital in ensuring that workplaces, marriages and families, even sporting teams and communities, can grow and develop well together.
No matter what they do, all counsellors share some qualities in common. Counsellors:
They also have a solid understanding of mental health and the factors that impact it.
That means to be a counsellor, clearly there are some skills to learn. That’s why studying with a reputable and effective organisation is really important. And as you study, you can begin to understand which aspect of the counselling profession suits you.
Here’s a quick overview of some of your options for counselling jobs.
All counselling requires an understanding of mental illness, but mental health counselling will specifically help those with clinical conditions such as depression and anxiety, through to psychosis and personality disorders. You’ll even need to understand things like trauma and grief to guide your clients through dealing with them. This understanding of mental health will then inform how you as a counsellor can help the client overcome their condition, through a broad range of clinical interventions.
Mental health counselling, by nature of the conditions being addressed, is usually focussed on the individual. Yet it can also utilise group facilitation in some circumstances. So a counsellor will be involved in designing and implementing treatment plans. This will require you developing an in-depth knowledge of psychological health concerns and the factors that influence them.
Much has been said about the rise of the need for mental health counselling in the shadow of COVID-19, and while this is true, the need for good, well trained, mental health counsellors has always existed, and was in fact on the rise prior to the pandemic.
Mental health counselling is usually carried out in a private practice environment or in a formal mental health, care organisation, or hospital setting.
While often seen as a ‘healing the break’ or ‘helping couples cope’ kind of therapy, there is an enormous amount of family counselling that can be about simply making things better.
From things such as pre-marriage discussions that help couples prepare for their new life, to family interventions that help parents and their children come to understand the constantly changing environment they are growing in, this is an area of counselling that can concentrate on the relationship as much as the individuals.
It does, however, seek to understand the role of the individual in the relationship and how these roles can be addressed to bring about stronger relationships. As such, it is a tremendously satisfying realm of counselling – and an extremely important one!
A family and relationships counsellor will be highly skilled at identifying the issues that are unique to each stage of human development. They’ll also be skilled in providing interventions that can specifically target the relationship, growing it beyond the underlying habits, factors, and existing mental health problems that may have contributed to any initial problems.
Family and marriage counselling can be undertaken from a private practice space, or within the comfort of the client’s home environment. Many care organisations and even local churches can employ a relationships counsellor to help strengthen or heal families and marriages.
This is another area that requires diverse skills and understanding, since educational establishments cater to students from the very beginning, at school entry age, right through to tertiary education institutions.
Counsellors in schools or other educational settings are required to walk with students, and staff, through the issues unique to the education context. Naturally, as with all forms of counselling, it’s vital that the counsellor is aware of underlying factors that may play into a student’s difficulties within the educational environment. The counsellor here can be extremely important in ensuring that the individual student can achieve their best and find their most fruitful way through the system.
As a counsellor in an educational setting, you will be able to support students who struggle with the educational and social environment of school as well as supporting their own personal wellbeing. This has great impact both in the lives of the individuals and the wider community as a result.
School and education counsellors will usually have a room on campus, since they’ll need to be close to students and be in a place where they can provide assistance and support for teachers and family members too.
As well as supporting students through their education, counsellors may provide guidance about individual wellbeing, personal and career decisions, giving students the tools and understanding to most confidently approach these life changes as well.
This an area that is growing as Australia grows. It’s often found within community service and care organisations, hospitals, and in a private practice setting.
With some 6,000 lives lost to drug and alcohol issues every year, this is an area of counselling that can be extremely valuable, with a direct impact on many lives. But there’s more.
Addiction and other mental health concerns are often underlying factors with drug and alcohol issues. So counsellors in this area must develop skills and understandings that can be utilised in all forms of addiction therapies, including such wide ranging issues as gambling addiction and even sexual addictions.
Drug and alcohol counsellors will need to be able to assist clients in managing their concerns, whether through cessation, reduction, or rehabilitation. To specialise in this area, you will need to develop broad experience and resilience, with a keen understanding of the psychological, historical and personal factors that can lead to and exacerbate these types of difficulties.
With this underpinning, a skilled drug and alcohol counsellor will play a vital role in helping those affected by substance abuse or other addictions to identify and remedy the harmful physical, psychological and social effects of their addictions.
This is another tremendously satisfying area of counselling, since you’ll help those who have been through something fairly traumatic and/or life changing, to help them develop ways of seeing and engaging with their lives again.
Rehabilitation counselling is almost an industry in itself, since corporations and organisations are required to provide support for staff who suffer debilitating impacts from their employment. These rehabilitation counsellors will often work for a specific company or with a corporate organisation and their clients will have experienced some form of work-place accident, injury or psychological harm.
Other rehabilitation counsellors may work in private practice or for care organisations. Their clients will be seeking rehabilitation from disability, accidents and health conditions, or even social disadvantage.
As a rehabilitation counsellor you can choose from a variety of specialisations, including disability, aged care, child and youth services, correctional services and military veterans or, in a private practice setting, you would allow clients’ requirements to focus your approach.
Given the scope of potential clients you will see, it’s clear that as a rehabilitation counsellor you’ll need to have a robust understanding of the many areas you will be required to assist with. This will include things such as trauma, growth stages, interpersonal relationships, family and cultural dynamics and many more, as you seek to develop an effective and efficient treatment plan with and for your clients.
Once again, this is an area of counselling that seeks to bring the client to place where they can effectively engage with the world in a satisfying way.
Clearly, all these different possible counselling jobs do have a few things in common. Most importantly, people will be trusting you to help them from a place where they feel unable to cope, and for you to give them the tools to step out strongly and safely into the world on their own terms.
This will require a lot of skill and a wealth of knowledge on your part, all guided by a useful understanding. This doesn’t just happen by accident. Nor is it good enough to ‘just be a good listener’ or to ‘really want to help’.
Perhaps the most important thing for a counsellor to have is confidence, born of deep knowledge and guided training. Most counselling jobs therefore require at least a bachelor’s degree in counselling or a related field such as psychology.
While counsellors may begin their training with a VET (Vocational Education and Training) level course, many move on quickly to more study, as they find the responsibility and expectations demand that they become more informed. This leads to more advanced study, including master’s degrees and even further study in specific specialisations.
It’s clear that the more you can learn – and the more you understand about counselling and mental health – the better, more efficient, and more valuable you can be as a counsellor.
For more information about Tabor’s counselling courses, get in touch with us online or call us today on 1300 482 267.