Principles of Assessment and Client Interventions - Coursework Example

Client case vignette al affiliation Introduction This is the case of an 18-year-old Somalian-American teenage called Fin with post-traumatic stress disorder who migrated with his alcoholic father to America after his mother, and two brothers were killed by Islamic militants. He was later placed in a foster home with Mr. Larry Smith. Case description The client is an eighteen-year-old teenager known as Fin with post-traumatic stress disorder in a foster home with Mr. Larry Smith. The client was ten years when his mother and two brothers were killed in Somalia by the Islamic militia. Having an extended family in America, he migrated with his father to New York. Three years ago the client ran away from a downtown hotel in New York, where he was living with his father. He complained that his father is alcoholic and not responsible. He complained that the father usually lay around the whole day, drinks alcohol and physically abused him by hitting him hard. After running away from his dad, the department of social services placed him in a foster home with Larry Smith. Mr. Larry Smith home is located in a middle-class neighborhood in the hills. The house is quite spacious, lovely and situated in a serene environment. Arts and books adorn his wall, which in his opinion is for storytelling and knowledge that there are other parts of the world out there that need to be explored. The house also has big comfortable furniture so that Fin and other two teenage boys under the care of Mr. Larry Smith can enjoy spending time in the house common place. Mr. Larry usually strives to maintain an orderly home atmosphere as Fin has a common habit of engaging the other two teenage boys in quarrels and fight. Fin post-traumatic stress disorder started after his mother and siblings were killed by the Islamic militia. He says that when he was still under the care of his dad, he was not able to talk and eat the whole day after the traumatic incident. He was later taken to the hospital by his dad and was discharged after three days. Although it has been eight years now since that traumatic incidence, he says that he still suffers from the loss and sometimes he goes into depression. Interview with Mr. Larry Smith indicated that Fin steals from the other boys and physically engages them in a fight. He also frequently fights with other children away from home. Currently, the department of juvenile probation and social services are currently conducting four separate investigations into Fin behavior. Owing to his traumatic stress disorder, Fin has also become alcoholic at his tender age. Efforts by Mr. Larry to make him stop his drinking have not borne any fruit. Mr. Larry also has an issue with the sexual orientation of Fin. Over the past one year after becoming seventeen years, Fin has been showing sexual attraction to men. Mr. Larry says that Fin hates having a company of girls and only likes keeping company with the boys and men. He has been showing suggestive sexual signs of being attracted to the male gender. Mr. Larry Smith also indicated that Fin has a poor academic ability. He noted that the poor academic ability can be attributed to Fin’s poor studying habits. Fin only finds time to study when exams are near and hardly last more than thirty minutes in hiss studying room. Efforts by Mr. Larry to help him get the right studying habits have hit a dead end due to lack of cooperation from Fin. Fin belongs to the African race and constantly interacts with the whites in America. He complains that he usually suffers from racial abuse from his friends who have the habit of referring to him as a monkey. This has hindered his education and social life because he finds it hard to interact with people who racially abuse him. He indicated that a year ago, he became a victim of racial abuse when he tried to board a train from home to school. The white people on the train refused to open the door for him to board the train just because he was of an African origin. This situation reignited his post-traumatic stress disorder that he has struggled with it for long. The racial abuse is also worsened by the fact that he is a Muslim. A majority of the people in America is Christians, and they regard Muslims as terrorist. When he interacts with the other children, they brand him terrorist and exclude him from their games and groups. Discussion The unfortunate client case demonstrates the fundamental importance of a child being raised by his or her two parents in his or her original homeland. Fin is living in a physical and ethnic/ cultural environment that is dramatically different from the one that he left eight years ago. In this environment, his father is alcoholic, and there is no mother to take care of him. In the same environment, he is racially abused and finds it hard to interact with people who are not of his religion and. Some of the traumatizing events that happened in his childhood years have left him with traumatic stress disorder changing his behavior completely. He is abusive to the other boys that he lives with him, and he engages in other undesired social behaviors such as drinking alcohol and stealing. Cognitive behavioral therapy Cognitive behavioral therapy involves various techniques, mental health counseling (Dattilio & Hanna, 2012). The client works with the mental health therapist by attending a certain number of counseling sessions. It helps the client become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so that he or she can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way. Cognitive-behavioral therapy does not eliminate all the client’s problems, but will help the client in dealing with them in an optimistic manner (Dattilio & Hanna, 2012). The therapy builds around on the principle that a client’s feelings, actions, physical sensations and thoughts are interrelated, and that destructive feelings and thoughts can result in a vicious cycle. It aims at breaking the vicious cycle by eliminating devastating issues and converting them into lesser problems. It focuses on current problems of the client and looks for practical ways to improve the daily life of the client (Dattilio & Hanna, 2012). The assessment and intervention strategies used in cognitive behavioral therapy occur in four steps. The first is identifying clients, troubling situations or conditions in their life. This may include many issues such as medical condition, grief, divorce, anger or symptoms of mental illness. During this period, the client and the therapist sat down to discuss the problems and goals that they need the client to focus (Pretorius, 2006). The next step is making the client aware of his or her thoughts, emotions, and beliefs about the troubling situations or conditions. Once the troubling situations and conditions have been identified by the client, the therapist will focus on encouraging the client to share thoughts, feeling, and emotions about them. This may include client’s self-talk (what he tell himself about a situation), the client’s interpretation of the situation meaning, beliefs about himself, other people and events. The cognitive behavioral therapist may suggest that the client keeps a diary or journal about himself (Pretorius, 2006). The third step is identifying negative or inaccurate thinking. By paying attention to the physical, emotional and behavioral responses to different situations, the client will be able to identify the patterns and to think that may be contributing to his problems. The negative thinking can then be modified to help the client cope with the troubling situations (Bennett-Levy, 2003). The last step is challenging negative or inaccurate thinking. In doing this, the therapist will ask the client whether he or she views the troubling situations is based on fact or inaccurate perception of what is going. This step can be challenging because the client may have long ways of thinking about his or her life (Bennett-Levy, 2003). Applying the theory to the case vignette Fin has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, since the traumatic events in his life where his mother and two brothers were killed by the Islamic militia. He also has a poor relationship with his father who is an alcoholic. Due to the many problems that he has, he usually goes into depression, making him resort to drinking alcohol. Looking at all these mental problems that Fin has, he fits to be a client for cognitive behavioral therapy. During the cognitive behavioral therapy, Fin will be assessed in his troubling situations and conditions in his life. These troubling situations include loss of his two siblings and mother, living with an alcoholic father during his early years in New York, racial abuse and religious discrimination. All these events has contributed negatively to the life of Fin. Loss of mother and siblings led to post-traumatic stress disorder while racial abuse and religious discrimination have led to socially undesired behaviors such as alcohol intake. The next step will be making Fin be aware of his thoughts, emotions, and beliefs about the identified situations and conditions. The identification of thoughts and feelings on his troubling conditions will help in identifying the ways of fixing his negative thoughts and feelings. Modification of Fin’s negative thoughts and feeling will prove to be a healing jab to his troubling situations and conditions. Lastly, Fin will be asked to challenge his negative and inaccurate thinking towards the troubling situation. For instance, if Fin had a negative thought that losing his mother and siblings has affected his life forever, the therapist will enable him to realize that all is not lost and that he can still start a new life. Strengths and weakness of the therapy Cognitive behavioral therapy is effective as compared to medications in treating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression that Fin has. It can also be completed within a relatively short period, making it less boring (Pretorius, 2006). The skills learned in cognitive behavioral therapy can also enable clients in solving future stressful and difficult issues even if the therapy is completed. The cognitive behavioral therapy is also structured in such a way that therapy sessions can occur in the form of groups (Pretorius, 2006). This can be very helpful in case of Fin because he can be accompanied to the therapy session by his caretaker. Because the therapy focuses on changing the negative thinking of the clients, the therapy will help Fin in changing his negative thoughts towards studies. The cognitive behavioral therapy has some weaknesses in solving client’s problems. Cognitive behavioral therapy is specifically designed to assist clients with mental disorders (Bennett-Levy, 2003). This means that other problems that are not part of mental issues that Fin has, such as homosexuality, racial and religious discrimination cannot be addressed by cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy also involves the clients in confronting their emotions and anxieties. The clients may experience initial periods where they are more anxious or emotionally uncontrollable (Bennett-Levy, 2003). The therapy also focuses on the individual capacity to change and does not address wider problems in systems and families that lead to the individual’s problems such as Fin losing his mother and two siblings and the alcoholism problem of his dad References Bennett-Levy, J. (2003). Mechanisms of change in cognitive therapy: The case of automatic thought records and behavioural experiments. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy. http://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465803003035 Dattilio, F. M., & Hanna, M. a. (2012). Collaboration in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 68(2), 146–158. http://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.21831 Pretorius, W. M. (2006). Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Supervision: Recommended Practice. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 34(04), 413. http://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465806002876 Read More