Affirmative care with transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) children and adolescents is a new framework under which many mental health clinicians now practice. It rests on a premise that appreciates diverse gender expressions and identities within society, and encourages the highest potential for individuals to follow their own paths to positive emotional well-being. Scientific understanding of the phenomenology of gender development in children and adolescents is scarce, and the gaps in knowledge limit evidence-based practice when working with these youths. Interventions span many domains within the physical and mental health realms, calling for providers to navigate differing interdisciplinary perspectives when optimizing assessment and treatment goals. In addition, interventions differ according to developmental stage, and newer approaches and treatments have become more popular within the last decade. For children, the concept of social gender transition has remained controversial, as relatively historical approaches (discouraging cross-gender behavior) have become outdated and more recent methods (supporting gender transition) have gained backing. Fully reversible pubertal suppression has been introduced for TGNC adolescents as a means of buying time for exploration without the pressures of irreversible pubertal advancement. Given the current deficits in scientific understanding of genderidentity development in youth, the affirmative provider often faces decisions that are challenging, complex, and unclear. This paper describes the theoretical approaches to TGNC youth across development, provides a brief overview of the current research, and offers providers a way to conceptualize and provide care that can be both supportive and scientifically driven when done in a thoughtful, balanced way.
Assisting transgender individuals is a concern for career development practitioners because there is a lack of knowledge on this topic. The complexity of gender reassignment surgery brings challenges and unique needs to this population, throughout gender transition, and requires career development practitioners to understand these challenges and needs to provide appropriate services to transgender individuals. The author conducted a comprehensive review of the literature in the areas of transgender issues in career development and counseling, counseling transgender individuals, gender transition, and multicultural counseling competencies. The role of career development practitioners as advocates for transgender individuals who experience gender transition is discussed.
This quasi‐experimental study compared the effectiveness of the Wellness Model of Supervision (WELMS; Lenz & Smith, 2010) with alternative supervision models for developing wellness constructs, total personal wellness, and helping skills among counselors‐in‐training. Participants were 32 master's‐level counseling students completing their internship requirements in a counseling program accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. Results of a split plot analysis of variance indicated that participants in the WELMS condition increased their personal definitions of wellness and total wellness while developing their counseling skills at a similar level when compared with participants receiving other models of supervision.
The authors examined the contribution of mindfulness and emotional intelligence to burnout among counseling interns (N = 380). Results indicated that higher scores on mindfulness and emotional intelligence were related to lower burnout scores. Counselor educators and supervisors should be proactive in helping students to cultivate wellness practices during internships.
After completing their academic degree, international student populations face unique situations in their search for employment in the United States. This study used a phenomenological examination to identify the perceptions and the experiences of eight undergraduate international students who participated in a 10‐week support group during the employment exploration and application process. Participants documented their personal reflections in journal entries and engaged in a single‐session focus group after the support group. Themes that emerged from the focus group and participants' journal entries were (a) discovering personal uniqueness, (b) coping with acculturation, and (c) dealing with a lack of resources. Implications for career development practitioners are discussed.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.