Group and Career Counseling | NCMHCE Exam Review

Welcome to the NCMHCE Exam Review Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. This podcast is brought to you by Counselor toolbox podcast and allce.com counselor continuing education, where you can get unlimited on demand CEUs for $59 or or unlimited live webinars for $40. Go to allce.com hey there everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the NCMHCE Exam Review. Today we're going to be talking about group and career counseling. Now, this is not going to be the most exciting episode that you're going to listen to, but there's a lot of important stuff here that you will probably need to know. For the test, we're going to review the indications and contraindications for group therapy and talk about the types of groups and the stages of group formation, identify the group curative factors and review the therapist's role in group. Then we're going to move on to just briefly touching on the models of career counseling and looking at career counseling assessment instruments. When you're doing your scenarios on the exam, you may have a client who would benefit from career counseling and would need some sort of an assessment done. It's going to be important for you to know the main instruments that are out there. There are tons of them out there, so I'm going to present some of the most common instruments. Hopefully those will be the ones on the test. But I've also given you links to a couple of webpages where you can find more information just in case you want to brush up on all the assessment instruments that are out there. Let's start by talking about group indicators for group. Generally, you know the most conservative approach to group is using group for interpersonal issues like communication issues, argumentativeness, self esteem, those sorts of things. However, we do know that group can be really effective with affective issues, depression, and anxiety. We know that group can also be helpful for what I call behavioral issues, addiction, relapse prevention, coping skills. It can also be helpful for cognitive issues. Now, I'm not talking about psychosis, nor am I really talking about personality disorders. What I'm talking about is your cognitive behavioral therapy, rebt, helping people identify cognitive distortions and irrational thoughts that are keeping them stuck. And group can also be used to address interpersonal and social issues. The client needs to be verbally, cognitively, and physically able to participate. They need to be able to talking, group and receive information verbally and understand what's going on. People with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, for example, may talk at a Very high level. However, they may receive information and encode information at a much lower level, more like at the level of, you know, sixth or eighth grade. Therefore, people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders may struggle in groups, especially groups with people that are chronologically similar in age. If they are in groups with other people with fasd, then you may be able to work that out. But you do want to make sure that the client not only can talk the talk, but also can understand and benefit from what's being said. They need to cognitively be able to participate. When I worked in the dual diagnosis facility, a lot of times we would have clients in detox, and you can't do groups in detox. Clients in detox are, you know, just there, and they are still trying to come out of the haze that was brought on by the substance use. Therefore, group is not appropriate or effective really in detox situations. However, once they got over to residential or intensive outpatient, we could start addressing cognitions. The client, again, needs to be able to take the information, encode it, and then apply it to their situation. They need to be able to understand, why is this meaningful to me? And physically able to participate is another one that we don't necessarily think of all the time, but they need to be able to stay awake. In detox, again, people were often exhausted and they weren't feeling well, so they were having a hard time really focusing on what anybody said, whether it was the assessment or the psychoeducational support group meetings or whatever was going on. In detox, we really didn't expect people to get much out of those groups. What we wanted them to do was start getting into a routine of getting up and showing up. In order to benefit from group, though, they need to be physically able, they need to be not in excruciating pain. They need to be not overly sick or detoxing. They need to be able to be physically present. And you may have some people who have low back issues, for example, and they can't sit for an hour or an hour and a half straight. A lot of us can't do that. That's okay as long as you make reasonable accommodations, they're physically able to participate. With accommodations. The client also has to be motivated to change. Clients who don't want to change are going to go into group, they're going to sit down, and they're going to keep checking their watch, trying to wait for group to be over. We want them to be motivated to be there. And it's incumbent upon the therapist to help clients see how can this benefit me? And I've done several videos in CounselorToolbox podcast on increasing motivation, addressing resistance. One of the things we need to look at when we're working with people in group is why are they here? What will help them get motivated to change? They may not have the same goals that I do in substance abuse. I would work with people who are involuntary and their goal was not to stop using substances. That's just wasn't in their mindset. Their goal was to get off probation. Well, okay, you want to get off probation, I want you to not use substances. But you have to be clean. You can't test dirty. You can't use substances while you're on probation. So let's work together to help you figure out how to stay clean while you're on probation. And then what you do after that, that's, you know, your business. That was a way to start helping them get more motivated to change. The client needs to find peer support and feedback beneficial. If they are not willing to take in peer support, if they are not willing to receive feedback or they can't tolerate feedback, they're not going to be appropriate for group. And the client needs to have a relatively positive view of group therapy. Some people have seen too much television that where groups, everybody sits around in a circle and they all look and one person monopolizes the conversation. That's not necessarily how group has to go. It's important to orient people to group so they do have a positive view of what can come out of group therapy. Contraindications for group therapy. Well, like I said earlier, people who refuse to participate if they are just a butt in a seat, while that may help your financial bottom line, that is not helping them. And that's not what the test is about. The test is about helping clients, not increasing your finances. You need to have people who can honor group agreements, including behavioral and attendance agreements. If they can't do this, they are not appropriate for group therapy. Their behavioral issues could be impulsivity related to mania or adhd. It could be paranoid delusions related to schizophrenia. It could be that they have a job where their schedule changes every week and they can't guarantee that they are going to be able to make group every week. Well, that's going to be a problem because that really disrupts the group milieu if people are not committed to it and attending, you know, each week for 12 weeks or whatever it is. People who are in crisis or have a low tolerance for anxiety and frustration, or are markedly depressed or suicidal Are often not appropriate for group therapy. Think about group therapy. Somebody may be talking and it may trigger another client. If the other client cannot tolerate distress for even a moment, then they may start decompensating, which would take the focus off the person who was talking. You need to have people who can relate, but they can also tolerate distress and tolerate frustration, Receive feedback. And clients who are markedly depressed or who have significant trauma issues, Group therapy is generally not the best choice. If they have these issues going on, they have a lot of stuff that may be more effectively processed in individual sessions. You don't want people whose defenses would clash with the dynamics of a group. Some people's defenses are to withdraw, which may make the group feel like the person doesn't care. Some people's defenses are to make light of the situation and be humorous, which can be seen as insensitive by group members. You want to make sure that you're getting people together who are generally going to be able to create a safe environment. You don't want people who can't tolerate strong emotions. And I've had groups before in residential where we would have a client in group and another person would be talking and would start to get upset or start to get loud, and it would trigger other people in the group who couldn't tolerate that person's intensity. It's important to make sure that people can tolerate intensity. If you've got somebody who is a victim of abuse, it's really important to recognize that if somebody else in the group starts emoting, it could be triggering or traumatizing. To your survivors that are in the group, you want to have at least a backup plan for them getting out. But in terms of the exam, if they can't tolerate strong emotions or are markedly depressed or suicidal or psychotic, you're not going to want to put them in group. People who experience severe internal discomfort in groups are also not appropriate for group therapy. My grandmother, for example, was raised in a time in her culture, it was not okay to be telling everybody your stuff. It was not okay to be open with other people, Especially other people who are not family and whom you barely knew. Therefore, being in group and sharing would be terribly uncomfortable to her culturally. You want to look at, is group therapy appropriate for this person? Now we'll get in a few minutes to the different types of groups. Some types of groups may be appropriate. Psycho educational groups may be appropriate for a wider range of people. Therapy groups and support groups may not be. Well, here we go. Types of groups. And I've broken this down into Three sort of categories, if you will. The first we're going to talk about is you can have groups that are gender based. You can have a women's group or a men's group where you talk about issues that are related to people's gender identity. You can have something that's a group that's topic based, a depression group, a group on ptsd. Now remember before I said you don't want to have people who have experienced a lot of trauma in a group where they're sharing details of what's going on. Topic based PTSD groups usually focus on identifying symptoms, triggers for symptoms, and mitigating those symptoms. Topic based groups can also include addiction or postpartum depression, any sort of diagnosis, if you will. You can also have groups that center around something like divorce if you've got a lot of clients who have adjustment disorder that is resulting from current divorce. And you can have skills based groups and these are more psychoeducational in nature where you teach coping skills, problem solving skills, interpersonal skills, distress, distress tolerance skills. People are going to that group in order to learn tools to help them deal with their emotions and maybe alter their cognitions so they can live in a happier, healthier sort of space. So those are generally the different types of groups that are out there, or labels, I don't know how you want to call it. The next category that I have is the method or again the type of group. You can have support groups. The support groups are not led by licensed clinicians. They are led by peers generally and they provide, guess what? Support psychoeducational groups tend to be your skills based groups and will often focus on teaching something about the diagnosis and or skills to address symptoms. And then therapy groups can be either gender based, topic based, or to a certain extent skill based, but generally gender based or topic based. And these are the groups where you've got eight people in a room and they are relatively homogenous on some dimension, whether it's their gender identity or their diagnosis or whatever it is. And you're going to work through issues that are common to, to that group. You can also have groups that are open or closed and open groups are groups that people can join any particular day or sometimes they're called open ended groups. Open groups are great because as a seat becomes vacant, you can put a but in that seat. However, when new people join the group, there is a process you've got to go through to kind of get that person indoctrinated, if you will, and into the group milieu. Closed groups are short term, task oriented groups. They're generally, for example, a depression management group that may be eight to 12 weeks. When it starts on day one, you have 10 clients. When it ends on week 12, hopefully you still have 10 clients. The same 10 clients, new people don't come in and then the next session starts where you can have a whole new group of 8 to 12 people. When you're doing group, it's important to remember and open ended groups, this kind of happens on a relatively weekly basis. But you have the stages. Forming is when everybody gets together and gets to know one another. This is the ice breaking stage, if you will. Storming is when there's jockeying for power. You have some people who think that they know a lot more. You have other people who tend to be more subordinate or submissive. People are trying to find their place in the power structure, in the microcosm of society that is represented in that group. Norming is when everybody finds their rhythm. The group has figured out, you know, how to function effectively as a group. Once they get to that point, it leads to performing. They know how to operate effectively now. So let's operate, let's figure out what to do and how to make this happen. And then adjourning, which doesn't rhyme with the other ones, but couldn't find another word, is when you start concluding, you start wrapping up. You know, this is the next to last session or the last session. You're tying up everything that you learned and translating it to practice to make sure that people can generalize it in their life when they, when they're not in group anymore. Group curative factors have been identified as the social microcosm that allows for multiple transferences. When you're in a group, you're going to have people that remind you of authority figures, that remind you of friends you had, that remind you of your parents, maybe, who knows? People tend to behave once they get into that norming stage. People tend to behave in group analogous to the way they behave in the real world. Therefore, observing them in group, you can start getting an idea about what may be prompting the difficulties they have in having in interpersonal interactions or things that may be contributing to their unhappiness in their life. Group also provides a lot of hope. People see each other recovering, people see each other getting better. It provides a sense of universality. People understand they're not alone anymore. You know, oh, this person is grieving too. This, you know, we're all grieving in here about something or we've all experienced some sort of trauma group can bring out altruism in people. Typically a well functioning group, the group members want to help one another. As somebody starts to break down or cry, you will see other group members go over to try to console that person. As people celebrate successes, the group gets happy for them and it gets people out of their own head and encourages them to participate interactively with the group. Community and group also provides self understanding and insight. As people interact in group. It's possible, and we're going to talk about the therapist role in a minute. It's possible to help them see how their behaviors may be contributing to, to their current situation and they start understanding what they're doing, what happens when they do that and why they're doing it. And then they can make choices from that point about what they want to do, if they want to change that behavior or not. The therapist's role in group, it's actually pretty active initially. You want to explain the phases in the group process help people understand that initially. You know, I've never met you before, you've never met me before, that's okay, you've never met each other before. I'm not expecting you to start telling your deepest, darkest secrets on day one of the group. Day one of the group is what's called forming. And this is when we get to know each other. And over the next couple of weeks we're going to go through a couple more stages where we start figuring out, you know, what we're comfortable doing and explaining to people what the group process will look like so they understand that the first couple of sessions may not be as intense as they will get down the road. The therapist goal and role is to create and maintain cohesion and participation. We need to start in that forming stage, that first day of group, helping people identify similarities between themselves and others in order to get that sense of normative normalcy, if you will. I don't like normal. I don't like that word. But so they can understand that they're not alone. They can start drawing similarities between themselves and other people and start seeing how they may benefit and, and be able to help others in that group, which leads to culture building. There's going to be a time where you've got to talk about what's the culture of this group. The culture of this group is to be accepting and validating and you know, you're going to go through discussing what it's like to create a safe environment. The therapist encourages people to focus on the here and now and Illuminates processes at work. If you can see two clients are exchanging hostile or unpleasant nonverbals, then that might be something to talk about. If you can see one client, for example, is giving a lot of minimal encouragers and is just really there and listening and being supportive to somebody else who is telling an emotional story, you can bring that out and you can ask the person who was talking, you know, how did it make you feel when Sam was clearly giving you support and encouragement to, you know, get this story out. Therapists do need to use appropriate self disclosure. You don't want to be just a fly on the wall or a referee. If you in group, you want the group members to understand that you're human too and be authentic. If something is powerful to you, talk about it. If something is frustrating to you, or if somebody's behavior is frustrating to you, then that might be appropriate too. Therapists facilitate the resolution of interpersonal conflict. A lot of times people who are in group do have some deficits or problems with interpersonal skills. They may not be comfortable with conflict, so they tend to submit to authority figures. Likewise, they may be overly aggressive. And it's important to help people figure out how to effectively and assertively resolve interpersonal conflict. Therapists use linking and blocking in order to maintain this culture. Linking is where you identify similarities among group members so they can feel a sense of cohesion. Blocking, just like it sounds like, is when you use verbal or nonverbal behaviors in order to interrupt an inappropriate behavior. If somebody is being aggressive, you may have to tell them to stop and if they don't stop, you may have to use a hand signal, a gesture or or worst case scenario, excuse them from the group. Blocking serves to keep the group a safe place to be. Not to squelch expression, but to make sure everybody feels safe. The therapist needs to model giving and receiving feedback using those I statements and also accepting feedback at the end of group. For example, asking everybody to go around the room and share something that they got out of group. How did group benefit you tonight? And something that they would like to do differently or something else that they would like to approach. In future groups, the therapist can start eliciting feedback and encouraging people to be assertive and identify what they want and need. The therapist needs to use structured activities and in your scenarios, you may be presented with something that says, this group is in the forming stage. What types of activities would you use? This group is in the performing stage. What types of activities would you use? Obviously, informing you're going to use more in the forming stage, you're going to use more icebreaker type activities get to know you activities psychoeducational stu to get people to start talking but not make them feel like you're ripping the band aid off an open wound. In the performing stage, activities may include role plays or art therapy or something that is going to really help them work through their issues. Therapists need to identify and discuss group themes and patterns. If there seems to be a theme going through the group. Maybe you have a lot of people who are experiencing anxiety about upcoming holidays or something. You can identify that. One of the things I do in group when I start the group, I have everybody give me a recap of what their week was. You know, how to how have things been going over the past week and what was the most significant thing that happened. Everybody shares that and then I try to draw connections between what's going on and identify sort of a unifying theme and that guides group maybe it's an assertiveness or lack of assertiveness that plagued the people in group over the past week. So we may focus on assertiveness skills and talking about, you know, how it might feel to be assertive. You're also going to challenge harmful behaviors and address interaction of group members outside of the group as well. That kind of sums up really quickly. Group counseling and you probably had an entire semester of group counseling. There are a lot of what's the word I'm looking for flashcard sets on quizlet For NCMHCE group counseling review go to quizlet or type in quizlet and that phrase and you will find some really good review flashcards. It may be more information than you need to know, but or it might be a good review. That's kind of up to you. Let's move on to career counseling. Career counseling doesn't take up as much of the NCMHCE as you probably saw on the nce. However, like I said earlier, you may have a client who comes in, they are a widow or who needs to transition from being a homemaker to getting a job. And you know, she has been at home, raised the kids, etc. All her life and now she needs to get a job in order to support herself since her significant other passed on. What do you do? You have to know which assessment instruments are going to be most useful. We'll talk about that a little bit more as we get through. Briefly, the models of career counseling Trait and factor models focus on individual abilities, interests and personalities and work adjustment in order to help figure out what sort of situation, what sort of work environment is going to be most congruent between the person's characteristics and their demands. For example, I tend to be an extrovert. I tend to be, I'm going to use MBTI terminology. I tend to be extroverted, intuitive feeling and judging, really strong on the judging. I don't do well with spontaneity at all. I like structure. I love structure. But I also really don't like working by myself and being by myself all the time. I would not be happy in a lab by myself all the time. I am not detail oriented. I would not be good in accounting. There are things like that that I know would be incongruent with my characteristics and traits. People tend to be happier when they're in environments that are more congruent. Sometimes they're not and they're in a job or they've chosen a career that is not totally congruent with who they are. Therapeutically we can help them figure out possibly how to modify their environment to be a little bit more congruent, but that's, you know, down the line. The client centered model emphasizes self concept and the existence of choices based on what the client perceives is best in his or her life. Just like client centered counseling, the goal is to talk with the client and help them explore the choices that might be available to them to help them be happier in their career or help them choose a career that's going to make them happy and then make those choices. Believing that people can make the best choices for themselves if they're given the support and the encouragement and enough information. The psychodynamic model stresses internal motivations and coping mechanisms and the person's belief or knowledge about what he or she is able to do. Psychodynamic basically takes into consideration people's belief system about their capabilities. When I was in high school and even college, math was not my strong suit. So my belief that I am not good at math, you know, that's just not my thing. Therefore my internal motivations would probably be to avoid that. However, I wanted to go to medical school. So my internal motivation was, you know, really strong to go to medical school. My sense of efficacy to pass calculus and organic chemistry was very low. So there's a disparity there. Unfortunately, when I was going through grad school, going through undergrad, I did not have effective coping skills to manage the distress and get through the stuff that I wasn't so good at. I didn't have enough efficacy or belief myself to get through it. Therefore, you know, I ended up changing my major to something that didn't require as much math. My internal motivation was always to help people. I wanted to be able to help people and make people healthier and happier. However, I didn't have the self efficacy that I could pass the STEM classes for medical school. Therefore, I arrived at a different conclusion. Developmental models focuses on career as a developmental maturational process. Now the Career Maturity Index is one assessment instrument that's out there to identify where somebody is in their career. If you're talking to somebody who is in high school, obviously they haven't started their career. So they're in the exploration stage and they're learning and they're moving towards something. That's their phase of development as somebody is in. Once somebody's taken a career, then their focus may be on promotion and advancement in that career. You want to take a look at where people are at currently. A lot of people tend to retire from one job at a certain point and start a second career. So at the end of somebody's career, they may want to explore a new career. It's important to take into consideration your client's age and ideas and what they want to do in the future. Behavioral career counseling focuses on making realistic career choices. That's the behavior and eliminating anxiety about making such choices. Basically, we want to educate people about, you know, what they can do and effectively what their skills, what they're capable of and help them look at the facts and make realistic choices about what's going to work for them and what's going to. What their skills are going to allow them to do. The values model helps clients choose careers in line with their values. And there are four dimensions that it looks at the time orientation. Some people are future oriented and they're looking towards retirement and they want to make as much money as possible right now so they can retire in 50 years. Some people are past focused. They grew up in an unhealthy environment and they want to help people so those people don't have to so other people don't have to grow up in an unhealthy environments. Some people are present focused and they are focused on what's right in front of them right now. And accounting can be very good at this because it's, you know, very tangible in what's in front of you. Then you've got people who are unconcerned with schedules. They are not tied to the future, to the past, to the present. They are just going along and they're very Flexible socially you have people who are individualistically oriented. They are very concerned about self promotion, making sure they climb up that corporate ladder and start earning more money. And a job is a means to an end for them and serves to benefit them. Collateral or collectivist people explore careers in terms of how it will benefit the greater good. Socially, they want to make sure that their career is going to fit with not only what makes them happy, you know, money, power, prestige, whatever, but also fits with their other other people in their life so they have enough time to go to their kids soccer games and be home every evening to see their spouse, etc. And then hierarchical social orientation. People prefer to be in environments in which there is some sort of hierarchy or paramilitary structure where there's no confusion about who has responsibility for what. The activity value is another dimension that is looked at. And this really looks at active versus passive responses. Does the person value actively trying to change something? They see a problem, they see something can always be improved. They're actively and proactively trying to make changes. Or are they more passive and reactive to what goes on? They are fine handling stuff, they're not going to go out and look for it. But if something happens, they are, you know, going to deal with whatever comes their way on any particular day. And then life values, which can be assessed with the Life Values Inventory, go figure. Some of these are really obviously named, which is really awesome. The Life Values Inventory helps people see what's important to them and you know, is a big house and a lot of money and a lot of power important to them? Or is being home every night and working 8 to 5 and having, you know, ability to take vacations, vacation days, is that important? What values are important to them? And then you wrap all that in a bow and figure out or compare those values to the careers the person is looking at and figure out which career would fit best. And then we move over to career choice. People choose. And this kind of goes with trait and factor theory. People choose careers based on, in part on their personality, if you will. And Holland has a, I believe it's an octagon that identifies all of these characteristics, but basically the acronym is riasec. The person who is more realistic likes hands on occupations like landscaping and auto mechanic. The investigative person likes problem solving. They are going to be often your lawyer and your police officer and your scientist. The artistic person, go figure. Likes making things of beauty and being artistic and contributing to the arts. Social personalities like helping others. They do what they do because they want to help and Encourage everybody in their section of the world to be as happy as possible and to succeed. Enterprising people, these are your leaders. They're the ones who want to be CEOs. They're the ones who want to be changers. And power is important to them. They like to lead, they like to command. And your conventional person, somebody who likes things that are routine and systematic. They're going to be people who don't mind going to work and doing the same thing. Actually they prefer it going to work and doing the same thing every day, day in and day out because they know what to expect. And there's a lot of different jobs that can kind of fall into this. You know, bank teller is pretty routine. Accountant can be pretty routine. Factory worker is often very routine. Encouraging people to look at what their preferences are. Most people are a combination of multiple preferences. There's one thing that dominates, but there are subordinate preferences. For me, social, go figure is my dominant personality trait. Enterprising and investigative tend to fall underneath it. So I have those three dimensions more in common. How do we figure it out? Well, let's talk about Holland first. Since we just finished the RIASEC model to identify people's preferences based on Holland's career choice theory, you can do the Vocational Preference Inventory and it helps categorize people into Holland's six types by having them rate 160 jobs based on I would love to do this or no, that sounds awful. The self directed search identifies competencies, attitudes and self efficacy toward occupations and again is based on Holland's six types. Vocational exploration and insight is used to increase occupations for consideration and help people understand what they want out of careers. Now all of those are kind of similar. My guess is you're not going to be asked to choose between all three of those. Choose one. Be aware those are Holland oriented tests. So is my vocational situation. However, my vocational situation is appropriate for somebody who currently has a career because they're going to be looking at their vocation, their current vocational situation, to identify what parts of that fit with their identity and what barriers there are in their current vocational situation that are making the environment incongruent with their preferences. The Ashland Interest Assessment is for people who have barriers to employment due to disabilities. That's the key factor here. If you've got somebody who has a disability and is acting as a barrier, the Ashland Interest Assessment may be the one you should choose. The Career Assessment Inventory focuses on careers that require zero to two years of post secondary training. You're not going to use this for somebody who is a junior in college or for somebody who's already graduated college. You can use it for an adult who never went to college who may want to go back to get additional training. You can use it for high school students who may be considering a two year degree for a career. Again, making sure you're choosing the assessments that are most appropriate to your client. The Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory assesses job satisfaction, work involvement, career worries, family commitments, and several other dimensions that will impact their job choice. We want to look at what people expect from their career and again help them figure out a career path or a career environment that is best going to fit their attitudes and strategies. Career Beliefs Inventory identifies cognitive distortions about themselves and their career. It has different sections that help people identify how they feel about their current career situation, what they identify as seeming necessary for happiness, factors that influence their decisions, changes they're willing to make, and other dimensions that you know, I didn't put on here because that's not what's most important. What's most important is to recognize that the Career Beliefs Inventory again is one of those tools that doesn't necessarily help people choose a career based on their traits, but it helps them look at their beliefs about what what's important to them and what work should be like in order to find an environment that's conducive. It doesn't focus as much on their actual skills as the trait and factor theory does. And the Career Interest Inventory helps students decide what courses to take and how to prepare for their preferred career. The Career Orientation Inventory assesses biology based careers. I know I remember seeing this one on when I took the ncmhce and it's one of those that's kind of thrown in there to throw you off because it doesn't sound like something that's specifically biology oriented. Make a mental note of that that the Career Orientation Inventory is only for people who want to be in biology based careers, from scientists to physician and everything in between. The Guide for Occupational Exploration explores interests in 12 areas and correlates with the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. This is what we used way back when when I did my master's in rehabilitation counseling. The Vocational Interest Inventory and the Strong Interest Inventory both help people identify careers based on their interests. It asks them, guess what of these things? Which ones seem most interesting to you? What would you like doing? And then it helps narrow the different careers down to careers that are in those areas. The Differential Aptitude Test keyword here is aptitude helps identify job related abilities and aptitudes what are you good at? There's what do you like in the interest inventory and then the aptitude test is what are you good at? Did you do really well in high school math and biology or did you do better in English? The Discover Career Planning program is a comprehensive computer based career guidance system offered on the Internet for grades five through adult. That's important, grades five through adult. So if you're dealing with a young person, especially somebody who is in maybe middle school, you're probably not going to be doing a career planning assessment for somebody who's five, but or somebody who's, I guess that would be 11 in grade five. It's probably going to be more towards middle school. But this would be an appropriate assessment to use with somebody who is 12, 13, 14 and up. It includes inventories of interest, abilities, values, plus detailed information about occupations. The Discover Career Planning program encompasses a lot of the different things that we've already talked about. Not only does it identify interests, it also looks at their abilities, their aptitudes and their values. The system of Interactive Guidance Information, or SIGE is designed to help university students and adults make informed career decisions through self assessments and in depth current educational and job information. The DISCOVER and the SIGE are newer tests, so I don't know if they're going to make it on the NCMHCE and however they are really commonly seen in vocational rehabilitation in the real world right now I would suggest just, you know, making a mental note of them and being aware that they are out there. I've also given you a link to a webpage that has a litany of other tests to review if you just want to be aware. It's important to be aware of the selection criteria for group counseling. Not everybody is appropriate for group. Not everybody is appropriate for every type of group. Some people will be uncomfortable in a co educational group, some people will be uncomfortable in a support group. It's important to know what your clients are comfortable with and help them see the benefit of group counseling and how group counseling can help them in order to find the best person fit for the groups that are available. In preparing for the ncmhce, remember to review your theories of career counseling and know the most common tests to use and on which clients those tests are appropriate. Which tests measure values? Which tests measure aptitudes? Which measures. Which tests measure interests? Which tests are appropriate for middle school and high schoolers? Which tests are appropriate for adults? You see where we're going here because you will probably be faced with at least one question in Your scenarios on that type of testing. So let's talk about some scenarios. These are your helpful hints, if you will. Tom is a 34 year old white male who completed two years of community college and is married with three children. He was referred by his employer due to anger management issues at work. During the assessment, you note that Tom is well oriented, verbal, but appears to have a lot of anxiety, especially related to finances right now. So the first question, is group therapy appropriate for him? Well, he's male. Okay, that's fine, whatever. He completed two years of community college, so theoretically he is cognitively able to participate. He does have some anger management issues. You'd want to explore a little bit more what that was about. But you do notice that a lot of his issues center around anxiety, specifically related to finances. It's not generalized anxiety disorder, it's anxiety about money. You know, maybe the three children are putting a strain on his bank account. Group therapy would probably not be overly helpful for Tom at this point because his issue is very narrow in focus and it's less about anger management and more about helping him Reduces anxiety so he is not always on edge. What other resources might be helpful? Financial counseling, Career counseling. Career counseling could definitely be helpful for Tom at this point to help him see if there are other options that might help him make more money. Those are the things that I would look at. Individual counseling can be helpful to examine cognitive distortions related to what's going on and potentially help him identify ways to manage his anxiety so he is not constantly on edge and is less likely to bite somebody's head off at work. There are more study resources here that you can look at in terms of, you know, what you might do to help Tom out. Julie is a 20 year old student getting her bachelor's degree in liberal arts. She does not yet know what she wants to do for a career. She's 20 years old, which means she's probably a junior. She's getting ready to graduate in 12, 18 months. Which of the following assessments would be appropriate? The Ashland interest Assessment. Well, that one's for people who have barriers to employment due to disabilities. She has no known disability, so that wouldn't be appropriate. The career assessment inventory. Well, that's for people who want a career that requires zero to two years of college. We established that Julie is already a junior. She's past that mark and almost finished with a four year degree. Probably going to have to get a master's or figure out something that a bachelor's in liberal arts will help her get the career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory assesses job satisfaction, work involvement, career worries, family commitments, etc. She doesn't have a job yet, so that's not going to be helpful. Career Beliefs Inventory identifies cognitive distortions about themselves and their career. No, she doesn't have a career yet, so she needs to figure out what she wants to do. Career Interest Inventory. Well, that might be helpful because it explores interests to help her narrow her career choices. The Guide for Occupational Exploration might be helpful because it explores interests in 12 areas and correlates with the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The Guide for Occupational Exploration is actually online now and they have a lot of online assessments. Just as a side note, the Vocational Interest Inventory or the Strong Interest Inventory. Those might be helpful because they help people identify careers based on their interests. And the Differential Aptitude Test. Remember the keyword here is aptitude helps people identify their job related abilities. So that might be helpful. You may choose one of the interest inventories and one of the aptitude tests. That's up to you and you know, obviously dependent on what they give you in the scenario. But you do need to make sure again you can see that there are a lot of these that sound like they might fit. Career Assessment Inventory. Sure, why not? No, because that's not going to be appropriate for her. Flashcards is the best way to memorize those tests and who they're appropriate for. I'm sorry, I know it's mundane, but it is important to be aware of who those tests are appropriate for. And yes, in regular practice you would probably go online and google and figure out or search the Internet and figure out a test from that point on or your organization would already have some tests there. But for the purposes of testing, you have to have them memorized at least long enough to take the test. Okay everybody, have a great day and I will see you on the next episode. Thank you for joining me today. Subscribe to the NCMHCE Exam Review Podcast to be notified when new episodes are released. And while you're at it, subscribe to Counselor Toolbox podcast to stay up to date on current trends in counseling and earn your continuing education on the go.