Gelişimsel Modeller Açısından Başlangıç Düzeyindeki Psikolojik Danışmanların Süpervizyonu ve Yaşadıkları Güçlükler ve Destekler

Ahmet Tanhan

doi:10.17984/adyuebd.336222

Abstract

Mental health providers address mental health issues and/or increase the quality of life at different levels starting from individual to global levels for individuals and communities. Mental health providers are key people who strive to alleviate suffering and enhance wellbeing of people. Therefore, more professional supervision is need to focus on the training of mental health providers, which means their clinical supervision. In this literature review article, the author specifically focused on empirical studies that examined beginning counselors’ developmental process. The author provided brief information about developmental models of supervision, common challenges and supports the beginning counselors-in-training experience, and common implications for supervisors. The author also shared some of their site experiences from Turkey and the U.S. to clarify how supervision needs more professional attention. They also explained how supervision in Turkey need more attention and yet also stated how some contextually sensitive supervision models emerge like structured active/engaged peer supervision model (or in Turkish, Yapılandırılmış Aktif Akran Süpervizyon Modeli, YASAM). The most important point of this study is supervisors consider developmental process of their supervisees and support them with positive, supportive, and constructive feedback while utilizing meaningful and engaging activities to challenge them so that supervision process becomes more effective and meaningful. Research questions were discussed for the future studies.

Highlights

Mental health providers are key people who alleviate suffering and enhance wellbeing of individuals, groups, and communities (Mackenzie, Knox, Gekoski, & Macaulay, 2004; Tanhan, 2014; 2017)
Understanding the supervision process and its pedagogical perspective, especially for the beginning counselors, from a more systematical perspective is important because the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs (CACREP, 2016) standards clearly stated that supervision for counselorsin-training is a crucial requirement of all programs accredited by CACREP; the focus of this paper is the supervision of counselors-in-training
As a result of the review and especially receiving feedback from the main people from all around the world known in ACT and Association of Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS) communities, the author of this paper found that the people in ACT and ACBS communities utilized supervision to just teach ACT, rather than seeing supervision as a unique subject that is complex and requires more attention and pedagogy

Summary

Introduction

Mental health providers (e.g., counselors, therapists) are key people who alleviate suffering and enhance wellbeing of individuals, groups, and communities (Mackenzie, Knox, Gekoski, & Macaulay, 2004; Tanhan, 2014; 2017). The researchers stressed the following aspects: keeping the teaching of core skills courses; using many different activities (e.g., experiential activities, reading books, sharing one’s story, in vivo role-play); paying close attention to creating space to enhance supervisees’ self-awareness to explore their strengths and weaknesses; using different models (e.g., ITM, reflecting team) for different courses to see counselors-in-training in multiple roles to get to know them better and help them to improve; and encouraging the counselors-in-training to explore the role of other factors (e.g., self-reflection, critical thinking) rather than just formal education (e.g., years of experience in practicing counseling, a doctorate degree).

Results

Conclusion