Theoritical approaches for understanding and treating offenders behaviors - Essay Example

Theoretical Approaches For Understanding and Treating Offenders Behaviors Affiliation: Date:Forensic counseling is an increasingly common practice in the contemporary world. Approaches to counseling forensic clients vary from one counselor to another, but the common denominator is that the client is the ultimate factor in choosing what approach to employ. Person-centered counseling is an important and effective approach employed in counseling forensic clients (Roesch & Zapf, 2012). This approach denotes a practice where the counselor and the client interact on a one-on-one basis.

Both the counselor and the client create an interaction platform where the needs and interests of the client are prioritized. In other words, person-centered approach to counseling promotes mutual understanding of the issues or matters at hand.In essence, the goal of the counselor is to view the matter in question from the client’s perspective. A person-centered counseling targets the client’s behavior, feelings, and attitude (Prochaska & Norcross, 2007). The idea is to highlight ways through these aspects influence the overall welfare of the client.

On the same note, empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard are critical to account for as far as person-centered counseling is concerned (Cepeda & Davenport, 2006). The objective is to ensure that both the client and the counselor interact on comfortable grounds.The forensic population is undoubtedly diverse, and this approach to counseling is effective because it focuses on the individual needs and interests of the client. The one-on-one form of interaction rationalizes the use of this approach since clients differ in terms of personality, behavior, attitude, feelings, and response to their problems (Roesch & Zapf, 2012).

The approach, therefore, allows the counselor to understand the client and design a mechanism to help the client as an individual. ReferencesCepeda, L. M. & Davenport, D. S. (2006). “Person-Centered Therapy and Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: An Integration of Present and Future Awareness”. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training (Educational Publishing Foundation) 43 (1): 1–12.Prochaska, J. O. & Norcross, J. C. (2007). Systems of Psychotherapy: A Trans-theoretical Analysis (6th Ed.) Belmont, CA: Thompson Brooks/Cole.Roesch, R. & Zapf, P. A. (Eds.). (2012).

Forensic assessments in criminal and civil law: A handbook for lawyers. New York: Oxford University Press.