Menangani tekanan

FENOMENA stres atau tekanan bukanlah perkara baru yang terjadi dalam masyarakat. Stres amat berkait rapat dengan gaya hidup, perwatakan seseorang, faktor keluarga, tekanan pekerjaan dan kejutan budaya.
Sekiranya tekanan gagal dikawal, ia akan memberikan kesan yang negatif kepada kesihatan emosi, mental dan fizikal. Orang yang tidak mampu mengawal tekanan, ditambah pula dengan iman yang kurang akan cenderung untuk berputus asa dan kecewa.

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Memperkasa minda remaja

MINDA atau akal adalah sesuatu yang amat penting bagi remaja. Ia adalah alat berfikir mendapatkan maklumat. Ia adalah sumber penting menjana ilmu. Dari minda ia memiliki upaya kognitif melakukan sesuatu dengan rasional dan logik.
Berfikir rasional yang dipandu dengan etika yang baik bakal memperkasa jalur berfikir remaja. Al-Quran memberi pedoman tentang pentingnya minda itu diperkasakan. Al-Quran menyebut tentang afala ta'qilun (tidakkah kamu menggunakan akal), juga afala tatafakkarun (tidakkah kamu mempunyai daya fikir) serta afala yatadabbarun (tidakkah kamu kaji selidik).
Asas-asas ini penting bagi remaja kerana berfikir itu tidak sahaja suatu aktiviti minda tetapi ia dipedoman dengan etika.

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Elak serangan jantung

Rashid yang berusia lewat 30-an sentiasa sibuk dengan tugasnya sebagai ketua pegawai eksekutif di sebuah syarikat. Terlalu sibuk hinggakan tidak mempunyai masa untuk menjaga kesihatan diri.
Pada suatu pagi, sewaktu Rashid hendak ke pejabat, dia mengalami rasa sakit dada yang amat sangat. Rasa sakit itu menyebabkan dia sukar bernafas dan tiba-tiba pitam.
Apabila Rashid pulih dan sedar semula, dia mendapati dirinya berada di hospital. Apakah yang telah berlaku?
"Rashid, anda telah mengalami serangan
jantung . Saya dapati serangan jantung berpunca daripada tabiat merokok anda," terang doktor.
Kisah Rashid adalah lazim bagi kebanyakan penghidap sakit jantung tetapi belum lagi didiagnosis. Orang seperti Rashid menjalani kehidupan harian tanpa menyedari bahawa mereka sedang menghidap penyakit ini.

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Kesedaran lelaki tentang barah payu dara

SALAH satu kebimbangan utama wanita Malaysia jika disahkan menghidap kanser payu dara ialah kemungkinan mereka ditinggalkan atau diabaikan oleh suami mereka.
Kebimbangan ini lazimnya menyebabkan mereka keberatan untuk menjalani pemeriksaan kanser payu dara secara berkala.
Justeru, diagnosis dibuat hanya di peringkat akhir di mana dalam keadaan ini, kejahilan nyata membawa kemudaratan sedangkan kanser payu dara terus menjadi kanser paling utama di kalangan wanita di Malaysia.

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Crisis Intervention in Counseling (Part 2)

Crisis intervention is the most widely applied form of brief treatment used by mental health practitioners. All crisis intervention and trauma treatment specialists are in agreement that before intervening, a full assessment of the individual and the situation must take place.
In a previous article we introduced the concept of crisis intervention and looked at two approaches: Faberow & Gordon Model of Crisis Intervention and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing. In this article we explore Robert’s Seven Stage Crisis Intervention Model and overview the role of counsellors in facilitating family and community adaptation.

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Group Therapeutic Factors for Change

It is important to recognise that the success of individual group members is intimately linked to the group as a whole.  Effective group therapy can help clients enhance self responsibility, increase readiness for change and establish authentic support for recovery and change. There are a number of therapeutic factors that influence the efficacy of group therapy. Yalom and Leszcz (2005) have categorised a number of factors. They are listed below:

• Installation of hope
• Universality
• Imparting of information
• Altruism
• The corrective recapitulation of the primary family group
• Development of socialising techniques

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Pluralism: Towards a New Paradigm for Therapy

How can we move beyond ‘schoolism’ towards a paradigm that embraces the full diversity of effective therapeutic methods and perspectives? Mick Cooper and John McLeod propose a ‘pluralistic’ approach.
Increasingly, counsellors and psychotherapists are becoming concerned that we are moving towards a therapeutic ‘monoculture’ in which cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) dominates; and in which other therapeutic orientations – such as psychodynamic, person-centred and integrative – are marginalised: freely-available only for clients who actively decline CBT, (1) or in the private and voluntary sectors.

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The Important Role of Mental Healthc Social Supprt

The mental health social supporter’s roles and responsibilities that you have identified in our previous article may be only a part of the full role. When providing social support it is also critically important to understand how your support may effectively be delivered in a community which includes professional counselling, medical services, and other care and support systems.

The mental health social supporter as a resource to the professional
How can professional and “natural” support systems collaborate with one another? One study noted that people get lots of help for personal mental-health-linked problems but not all of it from mental health professionals. Rather, people may turn to those “helping agents” with whom they have contact in everyday lives (such as the community caregiver and friends, for example).
Because informal helping networks work so well to reduce and even prevent problems, it is useful to consider opportunities for the exchange of resources between them — mental health social supporters — and professionals. It is clear that social supporters can work effectively as “complements” to formal treatment services (Gottlieb and Schroter, 1978). What follows are some specific ways that the mental health social supporter can assist the professional.

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Bahaviour and Solution Focused Couple Therapy

The practice of couple therapy has been encouraged to incorporate a more scientific model of practice and the use of research to inform the style of therapy most appropriate to use (Whiting & Crane, 2003). As a result, the discipline of couple and family counselling is moving to an evidence based focus. A number of theoretical frameworks have attempted to conceptualise dyadic relationships. Some of these theories have become foundations for the interventions that have become common in couple’s therapy today. Some of the models and theories include the strategic model, emotion focused therapy, solution focused therapy, behaviour theory and attachment theory.
In this article we overview two of these approaches.

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Symptoms and Behaviours of Unresolved Grief

Lindemann (1944), Lazare (1979) and Worden (2005) have identified numerous symptoms and behaviours that indicate unresolved / complicated grief. While many of the symptoms identified can be considered ordinary during the more acute earlier phase of grief, they are considered major signs of unresolved / complicated grief if they remain for unusually prolonged periods of time.
Also, the more symptoms an individual exhibits, the more likely they are experiencing unresolved grief (Worden, 2005; Freeman, 2005). Some of the symptoms are listed below:

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Managing Challenging Client

Within a counselling environment, the need may arise for a counsellor to work with clients who appear resistant to change or unhappy with external assistance. Some clients, who are attending counselling due to a mandated requirement, may resent the fact that they feel coerced into attending. Such clients may cite benefits such as meeting parole conditions or court orders as their only motivation for attendance.
Consequently, many individuals can view a counsellor’s involvement in this process as an imposition of their rights and they take the view that what is happening to them is in some way the counsellor’s fault.

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