Clinical Counselling in Primary Care

Description

More counsellors than ever before are being employed in a medical setting. Yet existing literature on primary care counselling contains insufficient examination of its complexities and of the variety of its therapeutic applications. Clinical Counselling in Primary Care fills this gap. In the light of the current professionalization of conselling, it looks at the variety of original and creative solutions that practitioners have developed to meet the challenges of this setting. Whilst highlighting the fact that there are still considerable differences between each practice, it takes the view that, if the counsellor can work with the healing power inherent in the setting, then s/he has an important tool for therapeutic change. The book examines the broader conceptual framework of clinical counselling in primary care, taking a differentiated postmodern outlook, and establishes a distinction between the different ways of seeing clinical practice in this setting. A range of important clinical issues - such as the therapeutic framework, seeing the clinical work as part of the greater whole and the need to develop suitable therapeutic models - are discussed. In addition to this, the book looks at possible developments in the future and argues that, with careful professionalization and a well-thought-out academic base, counselling can be a sophisticated activity which is not just the poor neighbour of psychotherapy. Marilyn Miller-Pietroni, University of Westminster; Richard House, Counsellor in primary care; Jonathan Smith, Birkbeck College; Annelie Curran, Psychotherapist in private