Why Counselors Should Consider Patient Socio-Economic and Culture - Essay Example

? PROJECT PROPOSAL ON WHY COUNSELORS AND PSYCHOTHERAPISTS SHOULD CONSIDER SOCIO-ECONOMIC, GENDER, RACE AND CULTURE OF PATIENTS’ Date: Proposed Research Topic: Why Counselors and Psychotherapists Should Take Patient’s Socio-economic, Gender, Race and Culture into Consideration. BACKGROUND OF STUDY Psychotherapy and counseling are activities undertaken to help a person where there is need to gain insight and better view, as well as positive perception of the happenings of one’s life ( PACFA Inc, 2013). They are well guided activities and performed by professionals who have the ability, qualification and understanding to effectively analyze a situation in relation to a patients story and life experiences. Patients come with different problems and from different backgrounds. Therefore, solving each and every one of them in the most suitable way that will in the end improve the lives is very imperative. Counselors’ and psychotherapists have an obligation and sworn responsibility to ensure that they perform their delegated duty with utmost diligence, and with the confidence and full responsibility to ascertain that the patients come out in a form better than they were before they joined the sessions (McLeod, 2003). The fact that patients come with different issues means that psychotherapists and counselors face an uphill task of the most extreme kind in the process of discharging their duties. Issues affecting patients are caused by a wide variety of factors and are different as they come. Psychotherapists and counselors therefore have to be skilled and careful enough to ensure that they understand patients well enough to gauge and put in perspective the remedy or action plan they would want to undertake. Demographic factors and others such as cultural differences, religious differences, ethnic and social differences must be considered while looking into a patient ( PACFA Inc, 2013). A patient’s gender, age and culture are therefore basics that should be considered when handling them, and so the purpose of this proposal arises. Counseling and psychotherapy are words that more often than not are used interchangeably or to mean the same thing (Fish, 2011). Counseling in simple terms means advising or providing guidance to a person who has got some problems which are forwarded to a professional for assistance and guidance. On the other hand, psychotherapy refers to the process of helping clients or patients gain insightful look into their problems and help them appreciate the significance and impact on their lives (UK Council for Psychotherapy, 2013). These are done with the aim of making them get to better their lives and improve their situations. Therefore, it is involving to the patients and is more of two way traffic from the therapist to the patient and vice versa. Past memories are brought back to better understand where a problem could have started so as to get a lifetime or at least a lasting solution. Cultural factors, for example, play very important roles in our day to day lives and activities. Islam, for example, has their religion so mixed up with their cultural lives that they tend to live and operate in accordance to the requirements of their religious teachings. Handling such a person for instance during a session, a counselor or a psychotherapist needs to understand the cultural requirements (Carter, 1998). The Muslims also have very strict guidelines on how they expect the female beings to behave, dress and portray themselves within the community. They have to be well understood from all angles of their lives to know better what lead them to actions within their lives. In this way, even when recommending and giving assistance, the professional is guided and gives those that are in tandem and accordance with the patients’ day to day norms and beliefs. RESEARCH QUESTIONS The research questions help the researcher that in the end ensures that the objectives of the research are achieved and in full. They help reduce the chances of diversion from the main topic or research problem. They also assist in a manner that only relevant information is targeted during the process of researching (Kumar, 2010). The research questions for this research proposal are: i. Is involving demographic factors of a patient when handling them in counseling or psychotherapy necessary? ii. What are the effects of not involving age as a factor of a counseling or psychotherapy patient’s problems? iii. What are the implications of excluding the gender of a counseling or psychotherapy patient? iv. What are the implications and role of a patient’s cultural norms in their need for counseling and psychotherapy? RESEARCH OBJECTIVES Research objectives are the achievable aims of the research study that help and in most cases are related and close to the research problem (Coolidge, 2002). They address the research questions and give more perspective to the aims of the study. The objectives come in different form as in, there can be the main or the general objective that generalizes the aim of the study and it can also be broken down. The smaller branches of the main objective are called the specific objectives and are majorly used to make reference and address the research questions. The objectives of this study include; v. To establish the necessity of involving demographic factors of a patient when handling them in counseling or psychotherapy vi. To investigate the effects of not involving age as a factor of a counseling or psychotherapy patient’s problems. vii. To investigate the implications of excluding the gender of a counseling or psychotherapy patient. viii. To understand the implications and role of a patient’s cultural norms in their need for counseling and psychotherapy. RESEARCH TECHNIQUES This research will be a qualitative research study that targets professionals who are counselors and psychotherapists to try and understand their perception of the research problems. The problem is to be understood in an insightful way and therefore qualitative methods of researching will be employed. These are techniques that allow and examine individuals or study units in-depth to bring out a better understanding (Silverman, 2010). Qualitative research helps the researcher to be able to study the variables in their natural settings and nature in order to understand the better. The data will be collected through and by use of questionnaires that will be designed to suit and address the research questions in full. Personal interviews will also be incorporated to help in situations where clarity is required (Wimmer & Dominick, 2011). SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This research will in for one go a long way in helping to complement the already available information on counseling and psychotherapy. Significance or importance of involving the age, gender and cultural background of patients during counseling and psychotherapy sessions will be brought out more clearly and in another perspective. It is always very important that topics and issues are addressed from different views and angles to ensure that they are adequately exhausted. Not involving these factors may lead to biasness on the part of the counselor or psychotherapist according to the ADRESSING model (Hays, 1996). Hays says in his journal that, the model helps the counsellors and psychotherapists in addressing issues that might be and might cause biasness in their day to day activities. Handling their patients needs to be very transparent and precise in order to ensure that each and every patient with their different problems are helped accordingly. Lives of patients and their behaviors in future rely on the actions and the understandings that they gain from the sessions they attend. The effects of the sessions on the patients largely rely on the reliability of the counsellors and what they discuss in the sessions as ways to progress forward. These can only be effective if all factors are considered when handling the patients so that they are well understood as to where their problems started and how effectively they can be combated. A study to investigate the implications of excluding or neglecting the above demographic factors goes along way in providing the required answers. It will also help add to the already available literature and research on the above topic. POPULATION OF STUDY This is a study that will try to learn much about the life experiences and behaviors of patients who need counseling and psychotherapy. It is a study that will involve in full, human beings; thus, it is a phenomenological analysis. Phenomenological analysis is the analysis that looks insightfully at the perceptions of an individual in order to understand their life experiences and how they go about the experiences (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). For this research, it helps in order to understand the effects of involving or not involving the above named demographic factors and considering them in counseling and psychotherapy. Insight into the actions and behaviors of the patients and how these actions are related to the above factors will be brought out more clearly using a research methodology that explores all the avenues of argument. In this case it will be through the use of interactive phenomenological analysis. TARGET SAMPLE The target sample will be majorly counseling and psychotherapy professionals with knowledge on the study topic. They will be involved in the acquisition of data for analysis as the information required can best be provided by them. Consultants in the field of study will also be engaged with interviews to help bring out a clear understanding of the research topic. The data to be used in this research will be entirely primary data. This is data that is collected for the first time and has never been used in any previous study or available in any journal or book (Read & Graham, 2002). Therefore, the information will entirely be first hand and specially for this study. These data will be collected through questionnaires that will be administered to the target population who will be informed of the purpose of the study and requested to participate. RESEARCH VARIABLES The research variables are part of the study that helps in measuring the information received from the data collected. They are the characteristics of a study that help in understanding the research questions and in the end help in achieving the objectives of the study (Punch, 2003). They are the guidelines that will help in avoiding irrelevance and in choosing of questions to administer in order to answer the research questions posed. The following questions will be asked to help achieve this; what factors do you consider when handling psychotherapy patients? Are these factors sufficient and enough to ensure the patients get what they really asked for? Do you think not involving the above factors may contribute to biasness in the treatment process? These and many other questions within the questionnaires will be designed to fulfill the purpose of this study. ETHICAL ASPECTS When all these are taken into consideration, questionnaires will be designed and pretested to confirm that they are fair and non-discriminating to anyone whatsoever. They shall then be passed to the relevant authorities for verification and authentication before being used. The target population will then be contacted and informed of the purpose of the study and requested for participation. Then, they shall be assured of confidence and anonymity in case they will agree to be participants in the study. Those who are included will then be taken through the training on what is required before the administering of questionnaires. The research will be a safe study that does not involve experimenting and so the safety of the participants from infection through any hazardous apparatus is guaranteed. The research is no way a covert research and therefore participants will be assured of the partiality and the importance of the research. This will be by informing them of the objectives of the study in relation to previous works and the relationship. The expected outcomes and what its importance will also help in assuring the participants that they will not be committing any offence by participating. The study will also not target vulnerable persons who may be deemed not able to act out of free will. Consent for participation will be ascertained to be from an adult with full and prior knowledge of their actions in accepting to be part of the study. References PACFA-Inc. (2013). Definition of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from Resources: http://www.pacfa.org.au/resources/cid/41/parent/0/t/resources/l/layout Carter, R. (1998). The Influence of Race and Racial Identity in Psychotherapy: Toward a Racially Inclusive Model. NewYork: Wiley. Coolidge, F. (2002). Statistics: A gentle Introduction. London: Sage. Fish, J. (2011). The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy. NewYork: Springer Books. Hays, P. A. (1996). Addressing the Complexities of Culture and Gender in Counseling. Journal of Counseling and Development , 74, 332. Kumar, R. (2010). Research Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners. London: SAGE. McLeod, J. (2003). Doing Counseling Research. London: SAGE. Punch, K. (2003). Survey Research: The Basics. London: SAGE. Read, R. E., & Graham, R. (2002). Manual of aerial survey: primary data acquisition. London: CRC Press/Whittles Publishing. Silverman, D. (2010). Qualitative Research. London: SAGE. Smith, J. A., Flowers, P., & Larkin, M. (2009). Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Theory, Method and Research. London: SAGE. UK-Council-for-Psychotherapy . (2013). About psychotherapy. Retrieved April 30, 2013, from http://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/article140.html Wimmer, R. D., & Dominick, J. R. (2011). Mass media research. New Delhi: Cengage Learning. Read More