Basic Counseling Skills: Working With People With Aphasia and Their Families

Purpose People with aphasia (PWA) and their families experience dramatic changes to many facets of life following stroke or other brain injury. With these changes comes complex loss and grief that can lead to chronic stress and depression, and impact recovery and rehabilitation. Clinicians working with PWA are often unsure how to best address these experiences and reactions. This tutorial introduces an approach to building the therapeutic alliance and navigating challenging conversations with clients and families using basic counseling skills that can be adapted to varying situations and clinical contexts. In addition to demonstrating each skill using example scenarios (Part 1), these skills are applied to the evolving stages of crisis and recovery experienced by many clients with communication impairment and their families—from injury onset to adjustment to chronic aphasia (Part 2). Conclusions Clinicians can adapt a set of basic counseling skills to promote effective therapeutic relationships and change in the lives of their clients across the contexts of recovery and rehabilitation. Although the clinician and client may work together for a relatively limited period of time, these flexible skills can help galvanize client engagement and participation in clinical activities, yield high-quality client information for treatment planning, and motivate clients as they navigate life with aphasia.

Komunitas Kawan Dengar: Acquiring Online Counseling Microskills

Keluhan psikis semakin meningkat selama pandemic covid-19. Berbagai pihak semakin genjar memberikan layanan konseling secara daring. Hanya saja, tidak semua pihak memiliki keterampilan dasar konseling terutama secara daring yang mumpuni, salah satu pemberi layanan konseling gratis adalah komunitas kawan dengar. Tujuan dari kegiatan pengabdian ini adalah melakukan pemberdayaan komunitas kawan dengar untuk mendapatkan keterampilan dasar konseling secara daring. Metode yang digunakan adalah eksperimen, menggunakan desain One Group Pretest-Posttest Design. Analisis data menggunakan uji beda paired sample t-test. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa ada peningkatan yang signifikan pada hasil pretes dibandingkan postes setelah perlakuan. Hasil tersebut menyajikan informasi baru di tengah minimnya hasil riset tentang keterampilan mikro dalam konseling secara daring sekaligus memberikan manfaat bagi masyarakat yang mendapatkan layanan konseling daring melalui komunitas kawan dengar.Psychological complaints increased during the covid-19 pandemic. Various parties are increasingly active in providing online counseling services. It's just that, not all parties have basic counseling skills, especially those who are qualified, one of the free counseling service providers is a community of listeners. The purpose of this service activity is to empower the community of listeners to gain basic counseling skills in a bold manner. The method used was experimental, using the One Group Pretest-Posttest Design design. Data analysis using different test Paired Sample T-Test. The results showed that there was a significant increase in pretest compared to posttest results after treatment. These results provide new information in the midst of the lack of research results on micro skills in counseling as well as providing benefits to people who get counseling services through the peer-to-peer community.

Development and Evaluation of ClientBot: Patient-Like Conversational Agent to Train Basic Counseling Skills (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Training therapists is both expensive and time-consuming. Degree–based training can require tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of expert instruction. Counseling skills practice often involves role-plays, standardized patients, or practice with real clients. Performance–based feedback is critical for skill development and expertise, but trainee therapists often receive minimal and subjective feedback, which is distal to their skill practice. OBJECTIVE In this study, we developed and evaluated a patient-like neural conversational agent, which provides real-time feedback to trainees via chat–based interaction. METHODS The text–based conversational agent was trained on an archive of 2354 psychotherapy transcripts and provided specific feedback on the use of basic interviewing and counseling skills (ie, open questions and reflections—summary statements of what a client has said). A total of 151 nontherapists were randomized to either (1) immediate feedback on their use of open questions and reflections during practice session with ClientBot or (2) initial education and encouragement on the skills. RESULTS Participants in the ClientBot condition used 91% (21.4/11.2) more reflections during practice with feedback (P<.001) and 76% (14.1/8) more reflections after feedback was removed (P<.001) relative to the control group. The treatment group used more open questions during training but not after feedback was removed, suggesting that certain skills may not improve with performance–based feedback. Finally, after feedback was removed, the ClientBot group used 31% (32.5/24.7) more listening skills overall (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that practice and feedback can improve trainee use of basic counseling skills.