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Applied Helping Skills
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Applied Helping Skills
Transforming Lives

Second Edition
June 2016 | 488 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
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With its practical, experiential approach, the Second Edition of Applied Helping Skills: Transforming Lives covers the basic skills and core interventions needed to begin seeing clients. By approaching therapy as an art rather than from a prescriptive diagnostic position, this text encourages readers to look at every situation differently and draw from their embedded knowledge to best serve the individuals in their care. Authors Leah Brew and Jeffrey A. Kottler weave humor and passion into their engaging prose, effectively conveying their excitement and satisfaction for doing helping work.

 
Part I: Foundations for Skills
 
Chapter 1: The Process Revealed
Reading Minds and Other Superpowers

 
My Psychic Powers

 
Secrets Revealed

 
How Therapists Enhance Their Powers

 
Power and Influence

 
You Gotta Be Desperate

 
It’s All About Leverage

 
Amateurs Versus Professionals

 
A Few Missing Ingredients

 
The Perfect Counseling Student

 
 
Chapter 2: Clients in Need: Individual, Social, and Cultural Factors
Cultural Context of the Client Experience

 
Cultural Skills and Competencies

 
Become Familiar With Cultural Differences

 
Assess Stage of Cultural Identity

 
Overview of a Client Concern

 
Ethical Considerations in the Practice of Helping Skills

 
How to be a Good Client

 
Decisions, Decisions

 
 
Chapter 3: Models of Helping
Theories and Their Offspring

 
An Integrated Model

 
 
Part II: Skills to Use With Individuals
 
Chapter 4: Skills for Builiding Collaborative Relationships
Your Best Relationships

 
Uses of the Therapeutic Relationship

 
About Empathy

 
Relationship Skills

 
 
Chapter 5: Skills of Assessment and Diagnosis
The Mental Status Exam

 
The Basics of Conducting an Intake Interview

 
Structured Intake Interviews

 
Special Considerations in Assessing Addiction

 
Special Considerations in Assessing Physical or Sexual Abuse

 
Special Considerations for High Suicide Risk

 
Special Considerations for Crisis Situations

 
Objective and Subjective Sources of Information

 
Models of Diagnosis

 
Remembering What You See and Hear

 
Making Things Fit Your Style

 
 
Chapter 6: Exploration Skills
An Overview of the Exploration Stage

 
Structuring the Conversations

 
Opening With a Story

 
Asking Questions

 
Reflecting Skills

 
Putting Reflecting Skills Together

 
Exploring the Past

 
Summarizing Themes

 
 
Chapter 7: Promoting Understanding and Insight
The Uses of Insight

 
The Limits of Insight

 
Selected Skills for Promoting Understanding

 
What Happens Next?

 
 
Chapter 8: Facilitating Action
Transition From Insight to Action

 
Dealing With Resistance

 
The Miracle Question

 
Setting Goals

 
Generating Alternatives

 
Reinforcing Behavior

 
Relaxation Training

 
Using Rehearsal and Imagery

 
Using Role-Playing

 
Using the Empty Chair

 
Using the Transference

 
 
Chapter 9: Maintaining Progress and Evaluating Results
Some Assessment Challenges

 
Skills of Evaluating Outcomes and Measuring Results: The Client’s Efforts

 
Skills of Evaluating Outcomes and Measuring Results: The Therapist’s Efforts

 
Ending Therapy Effectively

 
 
Part III: Skills to Use With Multiple Clients
 
Chapter 10: Skills for Family Therapy and Other Roles for Therapists
A Different Way of Looking at Things

 
Structuring a Family Interview

 
Couples Counseling

 
Specialized Skills for Working With Children

 
The Roles You Take as a Therapist

 
 
Chapter 11: Group Leadership Skills
Group Stage Development

 
Group Dynamics

 
Group Leadership Approaches

 
Unique Ethical Challenges

 
 
Chapter 12: Where to Go Next
What If I Don’t Know What to Do?

 
What If My Supervisor Finds Out How Little I Know?

 
What If I Hurt Someone?

 
What If I Don’t Have What It Takes?

 
Some Advice About Where to Go Next

 

“Applied Helping Skills: Transforming Lives, Second Edition discusses profound principles of helping in a simple conversational manner.”

Monte Gray
Bronx Community College

“This is a great text, as it provides an accessible approach to the essentials of applied helping skills and demystifies the helping profession.”

Theresa Benson
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

“The simplicity in the delivery of this text book is a key component is helping students at undergraduate and graduate learn the key principles involved in helping people to transform their lives. This textbook offers the student an insight into developing excellent skills in becoming therapists.”

Marian Connell
The Academy of Creative Psychological Therapy, Ireland
Key features
KEY FEATURES:
  • New video clips have been added to the existing collection of online resources for even more opportunities to engage readers with key concepts.
  • Content reflecting CACREP standards aligns with programs that foster the development of knowledgeable and caring professionals.    
  • Coverage of core helping skills is augmented with newer, more cutting-edge brief interventions and issues related to treatment planning.
  • A generic model of helping combines features of humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive theories to address a variety of different settings and clinical styles.
  • Diversity issues are infused into every facet of the process to emphasize the importance of adapting skills to fit the unique needs of individual clients and cultural groups.
  • Case examples, reflective activities, first-person accounts, homework assignments, and application exercises personalize concepts for immediate application to work and life settings.
  • Integrated Client Therapist Dialogues show students how the flow of client dialogue transpires and how to see identify possible solutions.
  • Attention is given to how effective practitioners feel, in addition to what they do.
  • An Appendix details a full session from the beginning to end stages of therapy to emphasize a variety of learning areas.