Wrestling with Ambiguity: Koans as Agents of Change and their Application to the Helping Professions

The concept of client-centered therapy (Rogers, 1951) has influenced many professions to refocus their treatment of clients from assessment outcomes to the person who uses the information from this assessment. The term adopted for use in the professions of Communication Sciences and Disorders and encouraged by The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is patient-centered care, with the goal of helping professions, like audiology, focus more centrally on the patient. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the principles used in a patient-centered therapy approach first described by de Shazer (1985) named Solution-Focused Therapy and how these principles might apply to the practice of audiology. The basic assumption behind this model is that people are the agents of change and the professional is there to help guide and enable clients to make the change the client wants to make. This model then is focused on solutions, not on the problems. It is postulated that by using the assumptions in this model audiologists will be more effective in a shorter time than current practice may allow.

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The Treatment of Drinking Problems: A Guide for the Helping Professions

SUCHT - Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Praxis / Journal of Addiction Research and Practice ◽

10.1024/suc.2003.49.5.313 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 49 (5) ◽

pp. 313-314

Author(s):

Johannes Lindenmeyer

Keyword(s):

Helping Professions ◽

Drinking Problems

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Cognitive Health Counseling 40+

Zeitschrift für Gesundheitspsychologie ◽

10.1026/0943-8149/a000085 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 24-33 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Anne Eschen ◽

Franzisca Zehnder ◽

Mike Martin

Keyword(s):

Outcome Variable ◽

Pilot Phase ◽

Subjective Memory ◽

Cognitive Health ◽

Health Counseling ◽

Agents Of Change ◽

Main Outcome Variable ◽

Further Development

This article introduces Cognitive Health Counseling 40+ (CH.CO40+), an individualized intervention that is conceptually based on the orchestration model of quality-of-life management ( Martin & Kliegel, 2010 ) and aims at improving satisfaction with cognitive health in adults aged 40 years and older. We describe the theoretically deduced characteristics of CH.CO40+, its target group, its multifactorial nature, its individualization, the application of subjective and objective measures, the role of participants as agents of change, and the rationale for choosing participants’ satisfaction with their cognitive health as main outcome variable. A pilot phase with 15 middle-aged and six older adults suggests that CH.CO40+ attracts, and may be particularly suitable for, subjective memory complainers. Implications of the pilot data for the further development of the intervention are discussed.

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