First I got referred for person-centred therapy, in which a counsellor tried to get me to come to terms with my latent homosexuality.
One was about a married man torn between his wife and his partying friends; another came out of a marriage-therapy session in which the counsellor told Barris and Rainbow that they needed to reboot their relationship, as if they'd never met, to suit their adult, not adolescent, selves.
It is expected that the extent to which the counsellor applied MI in a consistent way, is positively associated with the behavioural change of the patient.
CCCS, for instance, hopes to have a special service in operation for this sector of debtors in a year or so, a service in which the counsellors would have specialist knowledge of mental health problems.
According to BTP policy, officers struggling with mental health issues, including PTSD, are referred to an external service called Care First, which employs counsellors, some of whom are trained in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which are the recommended treatments for PTSD.
However task shifting was reported as a common context under which HIV counsellors and testers operated.
Supervisors were challenged to contain the difficult context in which peer counsellors had to work, including dealing with poverty and HIV.
They further stated that it could lead to marital disharmony including divorce for which the counsellors would ultimately be blamed for by the concerned parties and society.
In containing the emotional demands which peer counsellors experienced, our supervisors were strengthened by having a senior manager whom they too could turn to.
In light of the above findings, the conditions under which nurse-counsellors are expected to provide good quality counselling services are critically questioned.
