Counseling a Person with Developmental Disability - Essay Example

Counseling a Person with Developmental Disability Introduction People with disabilities often find it hard to be accepted in the society where they belong. They are taken by people not as a part of the society. History has it the in child was born with disability, one was not considered as a member of the society an in case, and they were liable to discrimination and condemnation. In some society, one was even thrown away in the forest to be eaten by the wild animals. Therefore history has not been that kind to individual who had developmental disability. They were considered as omens in the society and therefore the best way to deal with them was to throw them away in the forests. With the rise of modern medicine developmental disability became and interesting field of medicine and a good amount of time was spent on dealing with people with disabilities. A great amount of researches was carried out on this field to eventually come up with the best method that could alleviate the suffering of those with disability. With time there has been a great energy channeled towards controlling those with disabilities using medication, physical restrain and a great deal of restriction. But even with such efforts disabled people have continued to suffer in the society. They had not felt as a part of the society and despite the fact that modern medicine has gone a great way to alleviate their sufferings they are still suffering from emotional seclusion and social discrimination. There is need to offer them most comfortable life than the seeming medical life in the world. (Koscuilek, 2004) For all this time, counseling has not been accepted as a possible option that could alleviate them their suffering. Amy societies have not accepted offering of counseling to persons with development disability as an important process of helping them to accept themselves and also to be accepted by the larger society. Today counseling has become an important process that is likely to alleviate the emotional suffering of these people. Challenges faced by persons with developmental disabilities With the changing nature of life in the world, there has been increasing need to offer persons with disability a different sphere of life. More than ever, persons with disabilities are faced with the most challenges than ever in their whole life. They are faced with the challenge of being accepted in the society as equal to others. They face all the kinds of discrimination everywhere they go. In particular they are faced with a challenge in the following spheres of their life: Employment Friendships Family support Mental health services Discrimination Segregations These are some of the spheres of life where persons with disabilities are faced with difficult moments. They are likely to face great challenges when they come to look for a meaningful employment. If they are in wheel chairs, who is likely to employ them and how do they find a job that will need to be implemented by a person in a wheel chair/ these are some of the most important changes that they face when they are looking fro employment. In some cases, employers will specify what kin do person they need and they use a criterion which automatically eliminates those will development challenges. Therefore counseling can be important to assist them to get to know where they can find their probable employment despite the kind of disabilities that they may be facing. Disabled people find it hard to get friends. They are few people who are likely to associate with them and therefore it is only those who probably have disability who are likely to associate with them as such people with disability are faced with eth enormous challenge of finding the right kind of people that they can associate with. (Koscuilek, 2004) They are also faced with the same challenge when it comes to be accepted to their families. In this case disabled people face a hard challenge in gaining acceptance even in their family. Some family will take them as a family disgrace and therefore they will have few family members who can support them in they endeavors. Undergoing a successful counseling will help these people to form a cordial relationship with the family members which can assist them to get accepted in the society. People with disability are also faced with a challenge of accessing health service. Most of them will live with diseases in their bodies fore a long time which compromises their heath. They are likely to be faced with a challenge of ensuring that they get the needed medical help since the same cycle of rejection and discrimination may meet them in the heath care facilities. Unless they have family support, these individual are likely to lack the basic medical attention. The greatest challenge that is faced by these people is discrimination and segregation. People with disability are faced with a challenge of being discriminated in the social circles. They are not accepted as equal to others and therefore they are likely to face severe discrimination in their life. People with disability are also segregated in the mainstream of the society. They are not considered as equal to other. In all the spheres of life, they are treated as less human being. Effective counseling will assist these people with developmental disability to cope with some of there challenges and accept themselves as equal to others. They are also likely to understand others and therefore live together with them even when they are not accepted. Counseling need for persons with disabilities There are various reasons why people with developmental disabilities should be counseled. People with disability unlike others are faced with major challenges and therefore they need to be counseled from time to time in order to help them gain self acceptance and social acceptance as well. The following are some of the reasons why people with disabilities need to be counseled: Social loneliness Emotional loneliness Negative experiences Increase risk of developing depression and mental health problems These effects can be seen as a cycle in which people with disabilities are likely to undergo in their life. This should be seen as a viscous cycle in which one thing leads to another and which is difficult to break unless there is an effective intervention that will break this cycle. We have seen that people with development disability faces a great challenges of being socially accepted. As a result there are few people who are likely to be associated with them and therefore they are likely to suffer a lot of social loneliness. They will spend most of their time alone talking to no one. They are excluded from the social circles which are important to the development of any human being. Social loneliness is likely to increase their emotional loneliness since deep inside, they understand that there are few individuals who are likely to accept them. Emotional loneliness sets in when these individual have no one they can associate with. There is not one with whom they can share their problems which means with time they will have overloaded emotions which they cannot shed. In a counseling process, these individuals are likely to pour out all their negative emotions that my have accumulated. This means that they will be relieved and fell social acceptance again. Heavy loads of emotional are likely to lead to increased chances of depression. The above two factor makes these individuals to have negative experiences in their life. These negative experiences are likely to affect the way they live and therefore with time they are likely to be social an emotional affected. Negative experiences make them to feel les accepted and less equal beings to the rest of ht family and the society members. Therefore they have to be effective strategy that will mitigate the situation and perhaps reduce the negative experiences that these people are experiencing. (Koscuilek, 2004) The vicious cycle continues from here. With increased negative experience and with no one to share with about these experiences, these individuals are likely to have increased chance of developing depression and other sorts of mental illnesses in their life. This cycle has been found to be very common among the individuals with development disabilities. Failure of the current treatments It has been proved that the current treatment design for the person with development disability has failed to meet the expected results. It has been shown that most of the individual with developmental disabilities are faced with a slim chance of ever making it in their life owing to the increased medication that they are currently taking. Researches have confirmed that there are more than 50% of the individual with development disability who rely on the conventional medicine for treatment of once of different kinds of disease. A great number of them have been show to be suffering from complication which can be directly related to depression. More than 50% of the current populations with Developmental disability are taking at least one type of psychotropic medication to treat different conditions. (Brown, 2005) There are a number of modern treatments that are included in the treatment process. Notable the following are the most common current methods that are used in the treatment of persons with developmental disabilities: Medication management Psychiatrist follow up Behavior modification It has been argued that these methods are no enough to offer complete treatment to the individual. There is need to offered a thorough treatment method that will offer emotional treatment to the convention medicine. In this case counseling has not been left as a possible option to offer such kind of treatment. This greater percentage of the population has been shown to have increased chances of developing depression, anxiety and other types of mental heath complication in the course of their treatment. This minas that if a large segment of their disease can be attributed to depression which is the end result of the viscous cycle that we looked at, counseling can therefore reduce the number of these individual who are under these medication since it will help to break the viscous cycle that we reviewed. Coupling for a person with developmental disabilities Following the analysis that we have carried so far, it is now very clear that people with disabilities need to be effectively counseled in order to ensure that they participate fully in the social life. It has been observed that most of the individuals with development disabilities record some kind of improvement when they undergo counseling service. Therefore it has become particularly important for the use of use of counseling service to ensure that these individuals records maximum recovery. However it is not that easy to carry out counseling session for the people with disabilities. It has been realized that counselors are also faced with an enormous task of carrying out effective counseling service for these people. There are many factors that have been attributed to this effect but notable lack of education and experience in the counseling professionals has been particularly the main factors that have limited their overall participation in the counseling process. It has also been shown that lack of effective training to deal with people with developmental disabilities also constrains the effectiveness of the counseling process for these individuals. (Brown, 2005) Unlike in the normal counseling process, there has to be effective alteration of the counseling techniques in order to meet the counseling needs of these individual. It has been realized that there is need to have an effective counseling process which will ensure that those individual with disability fully participate in the process. There are also some other issues like payment of the counseling services and the physical access to counseling service which are also likely to constrain the process. There are many therapists who have shown that they are not comfortable working with the client who have development disabilities. Most of them have assumed that these individual do not have the needed cognitive skills which can enable them to participate fully in the counseling process. Although this has been shown to be a particular constrain to the counseling process, there is a need to have in place and effective strategy in the manipulation of the counseling process which will ensure that these individual full adapts to the needed counseling procedures. This meant that therapists must come up with effective counseling procedures that will enhance the counseling process and take the right approach to the counseling procedures. They need to take a different approach to the counseling process to ensure that it becomes eventually effective. Counseling must play an effective role that will break the cycle that we have created in the perception of the persons with disabilities. There are number of social creation that has made it difficult to carry out an effective counseling process owing to the ramification of these social creations to our perception of these individual. To mention but a few, social creation like Special Olympics, Special Needs, Special Education, and many others are perhaps some of the factors which continuously constrain out perception of people with development disability and their perception of use which constrains the counseling process. (Brown, 2005) The counseling process acts as an education process rather than an exposure process. Our experience with the disabled segment of our population has taught us that education rather than exposure should be the best method that will promote acceptance, understanding and appreciation of those with developmental disabilities. The counseling process for persons with developmental disabilities We have already asserted that there is need to have an effective counseling process if at we are to provide meaningful counseling to these individual. It is therefore important to come up with procedures that will change the counseling process to suit their needs. One of the most important factors in the counseling process is the accurate diagnosis of the problem that the client is facing. The diagnoses process will determine the overall effectiveness of the counseling process since it will help both parts to understand and accept the others. It will also help the counselor to come up with an effective process to provide the most effective remedy to the diagnosis. There has to be an accurate diagnose of the exact problem that the person is facing. There are number of methods that can be used in the diagnose process. Counselors should understand that there is no one method that can be considered as most effective and application of different methods is essential in order to achieve the overall effectiveness of the diagnose. This means that the counselor should use multiple method including self reports, observation, information from staff and family. A counselor should not jump into conclusion but one should rather concentrate on looking for the possibilities of the treatment process. (Voigt, 2007) The other most important factor in the counseling process is the functional analysis process. In this case, there has to be an effective way in which the counselor will analyze the environmental which is likely to make the counseling process more effective. Functional analysis in this case would therefore involve the process of communication, sensory processing, environment, culture, medical, and medications. In the course of the counseling process, there has to be an effective analysis of the behavior of the person. One of the main reasons why counselor finds it difficult to work with such individuals is that they fail to understand the behavior of these individual. However behavior challenges are not supposed to be seen as a problem that they are the symptoms which can be used to diagnose the exact problem with these individual. In case the counselor see the problem as a real hurdle to the counseling process, then the process would take the wrong approach right from the started and it is not likely to achieve its objectives. The techniques that should be applied in the counseling process are basically the same but they should be modified the basic helping skills are similar as in the other normal counseling session. However the CBT techniques ought to be modified somehow in order to match the requirements of these individuals. The technique should also provide a solution focused therapy which will provide remedies for the counseling process. The most important factor in the counseling process is communication. The counselor has to vary the communication process in order to match the requirements of the client. There should be a number of communication alternatives which are employed in the process to ensure that it matches the demands of the client. To ensure the effectiveness of the counseling process, there has to be some form of role playing. This will enhance the understating process of the clients. In a normal situation, it may be difficult to understand the individual with development disability and therefore a variety of techniques have to be employed to ensure the effectiveness of the process. From time to time therapeutic interventions will assist the counseling process to proceed in the most effective way. (Hansen and Trenhaile, 2007) Conclusion Individual with development disability are faced with many challenges in the society. They have been increasingly exerting themselves to play a productive role in the society but it has responded in the same way with benevolence and remediation instead of equality and respect. However the counseling process has a role to play to promote social change and mitigate the situation for these individual. Reference Hansen, B. & Trenhaile, J. (2007): Counseling people with developmental disabilities. Retrieved from http://learn.sdstate.edu/ddcounseling/Counseling%20People%20with%20DD%207.13.ppt on 21st August 2008 Voigt, R. (2007): Self-Esteem for people with disabilities. Claire Counseling Services Brya, W. V. (2007): Multicultural Aspects of Disabilities: Guide to understanding and assisting minorities in the rehabilitation process. Charles Thomas Brown, D. S. (2005): Peer counseling. International Centre for Disability Resource Koscuilek, J. F. (2004): Empowering people with disabilities through vocational rehabilitation counseling. American Rehabilitation Read More