Perception of Interviewees on Counseling

In this project, we have interviewed ten people for their perception on counseling. Most of them
have the opinion that counseling is something that can benefit people and it is not a bad approach
to solve various difficulties in our life. To be more specific, one of the interviewees sees
counseling as a place for people to seek information and advice for their problems. Another
interviewee has almost the same opinion that counseling serve as guidance to the right direction
life decision. Some of them see counseling as a tool for reducing stress and that a counseling
session will make them feel better and relief. One special respond given by a interviewee is that
counseling is very helpful no doubt, but he noted that it is still not very well-known in Malaysia
and related parties should promote counseling so that it can help and provide guidance to more
people. To prove that counseling is still not very well-known, we have three out of ten
interviewees who told us that they have no clear idea what counseling really about. Thus, from
the interviews we can see that most people only have a general understanding about what is
counseling.

Roles of counselor
According to Nystul (2011), the roles of counselor are divided into direct intervention strategies
and indirect intervention strategies. Direct intervention strategies include counseling and crisis
intervention whereas indirect intervention strategies include prevention, advocacy, consulting,
mediation, and mentoring. Education role is both direct and indirect intervention strategy.
Counseling is a common direct approach to clients problems. There are different kind of
counseling, such as individual counseling, group counseling, marriage and family counseling,
substance abuse counseling and many more (Nystul, 2011).
Counselors also provide crisis-intervention services. Crisis-intervention is different from
counseling, the focus of crisis-intervention is more narrow and superficial, its goals are more
modest, and it has a briefer duration than counseling. The four-step model of crisis intervention
start from determines whether the client is in crisis. Next, determine the severity of the crisis and
capability of client to take an active role. Then, take action to restore equilibrium to the client.
Lastly, follow up clients reaction (Nystul, 2011).
Another role of counselor is prevention. Prevention is mostly used in the community health
movement. For example, counselor helps to promote mental health and prevent mental disorders
in a community. There are three types of prevention, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary
prevention aim to strengthen a populations resistance and offset harmful influences before an
impact is done. Secondary prevention is programs that attempt to identify individuals who are at
risk for developing certain problems and the prescribing remedial activities to prevent those
problems from occurring. Tertiary prevention attempts to avoid further damage of an existing
problem (Nystul, 2011).
Next, advocacy is also a major role of counselor. The counselor will support the client and do
something for the client. For example, a counselor will work with a human services department
to help a client to get entitled benefits. Timing is very important for advocacy. The counselor has
to decide when to support the client and when to let the client take the initiative. The counselors
also need the support of the system so that they can work effectively with that system. To
maintain support from the system, the counselor should be flexible and able to compromise. At
the same time, the communication skill of the counselor is also important as they have to listen
and communicate with the client from different points of view (Nystul, 2011).
Then, counselors also play a consulting role. A consultation is the interaction between the
consultant, who is a specialist and the consultee, who needs the consultants help in a current
difficult problem. For instance, a counselor consults a parent who is having problem at home.
Moreover, consultation can involve working with individuals, couples, groups, families,
organization, and larger system such as communities (Nystul, 2011).
Mediation, it is one of the latest roles of counselors. For example, a mediation services provided
for divorce individuals. It is also defined as the facilitation of an agreement between two or more
disputing parties. There are three major steps in in the mediation process. Firstly, the counselor
establishes cooperative tone, setting the rules, obtaining a commitment to the process, and
providing an overview. Secondly, the counselor reviews all the pertinent formation to get an
overview and develop an action plan with the clients. Lastly, the counselor works with the clients
to help them reach a specific agreement (Nystul, 2011).
Another new role of counselor is mentoring. Mentoring happens when a trusted and experienced
individual takes a direct interest in the development and education of a younger, less-experienced
individual. For example, a school counselor mentoring a student in dealing with study plans.
Mentoring has a positive impact on the mentor, the less-experienced individual, and the
organization involved (Nystul, 2011).
Last but not least, education is an important role in both of the strategies. A counselor can teach a
client to become more autonomous, avoid future crisis, parent education, to be assertive without
alienating others, to avoid burn-out, to resolve conflicts, and to learn from a more experienced
person (Nystul, 2011).


The Solutions to Increase Peoples Awareness toward Counseling
Counseling is indeed a healthy and useful way to guide people and help them to solve some
difficulties. But still, many are not aware of its usefulness and the advantages counseling could
bring. If counseling is widely known by people around the country and more counseling center
are available, it will definitely help to decrease some social problems such as violence, suicide,
homicide, and many more. Thus, it is very important to increase peoples awareness toward
counseling. There are many ways to achieve this target.
One of the ways to increase peoples awareness is the formal walk, giving talk. For example, in
university, college, school, community, hospital, and jail, talks can be given to the people in
these places to promote counseling. The talk aim to explain what is counseling, the benefits of
counseling, the availability of counseling, and the most important part, to clear the
misconception about counseling. Many people still think that someone who goes to counseling
session is abnormal and might having serious mental disorder. This is a wrong perception about
counseling. Thus, if the talk can explain thoroughly what is counseling and that counseling is a
normal activity, counseling can be a norm in a population.
In addition, counseling can also be promoted by adding more counseling courses for university
students. If there are more courses about counseling, there will be more graduates major in
counseling. This in turn will make more people understand what is counseling and the benefits of
counseling. After the students graduate in counseling major, they will help to promote
counseling to the public indirectly. There will also be more counselors available in counseling
center around the country.
Another way to increase peoples awareness toward counseling is by advertisement.
Advertisement comes in various forms, such as newspaper, brochure, television, radio, internet,
billboard and many more. From all of these approaches, counseling can be promoted more
effectively. The advertisement about counseling should include the benefits of counseling and
the way to reach out to a counseling center. To make things more attractive, we could also
invited some popular artist to be the spokesperson of the program because many people tend to
be easily influenced by someone they like. In this way, counseling will be a trend in the
population.
Personal Reflection
Ong Chong Yang
With this assignment, I have learnt that there are many people who do not understand what is
counseling or a least their knowledge about counseling is very little. Some of the people not even
bother to know what is counseling. In my opinion, this is a very unhealthy phenomenon and need
to be changed as soon as possible. When we are doing the interviews, I find out that many people
are very nervous about being interviewed and recorded. Most of them become shy, and tend to
talk softer. This might shows that video recording interview is still a very uncommon thing
among them. On the other hand, I learnt that interviewing a person in public is not a simple task
for the interviewer. This is because some of the people might reject to be interviewed or just
walk away impolitely. Thus, we had a lot of rejection from the people when we were looking for
people to interview and eventually we done the interview session. Another thing I learnt from the
assignment is teamwork, teamwork is very important to complete a task. When we were having
group discussion, everyone in the group is very cooperative and also gave some useful opinion.
We also had a great time while shooting the video, every one of us tried our best to act in the
video. Sometimes, we will also give advice about how a scene should be acted. In the process of
writing this assignment, the works are distributed evenly to every group members. Finally,
without the cooperation from every group members and the interviewees, we will not able to
finish this assignment. Thus, a million thanks to those who were involved in this assignment.
Lee Thong Long
In this assignment, I realize that there are still a lot of people who do not know what is
counseling. All of them can only think that counseling is to help people to solve their problem
and giving some advice or opinion to the client. Of course, I was one of the people before. But
after I take this subject Introduction to Counseling and did the assignment, I learned that
counseling is not just giving advice and help them solve the problem, counseling guides the
client and help the client to understand the problem without giving any opinion and advice.
Besides, I also realize the power of language. For example, during counseling session the
counselor will use different words in order to help the client to avoid misunderstanding. For
example, the counselor will say would you like to share with me about your story, and not
would you like to tell me about your story. The counselor also will use the sentence I
understand your feeling, to show empathy. I learned that using correct words is very important,
if not, it may lead to some serious problems. Thus, in this assignment I had learned a lot of thing,
but some people still know nothing about counseling, thus I think that we should find the
solution to help the society understand what is counseling.
Tang Choon Peng
Through this assignment, I found that there are still a lot of people do not know what is
counseling really about. Many people still think that seeking for counseling help is only for those
people who has mental problem. This kind of thinking happened because they only listen to what
other people say and never try to understand something with their own effort. They might be
confused between counseling and psychotherapy. Another reason is because counseling is not so
well-known in Malaysia, unlike some western countries such as United States and United
Kingdom. In western countries, people seek for counseling help is very common. So, through
this assignment, we are trying our best to let people know more about counseling and understand
what counseling actually does. We want to let people know that counseling is not only for those
people who have mental problem. Besides that, I learnt to interview strangers because of this
assignment. Before this assignment I had never interview strangers. When I knew this
assignment need to interview strangers, I feel very nervous and it is new for me. But after I
successfully interview a stranger, I realize that it is not so difficult. Lastly I would like to thanks
my lecturer for giving this assignment. This assignment let me have the chances to interview
stranger and act like a counselor in a video. I also want to thanks my group members for helping
me in this assignment.
Connie Anne Yew
In my opinion, before I study counseling my perception toward counseling is it is only for people
who have mental problems or discipline problem at school, but after I study this subject Intro to
Counseling and did this assignment, I realize that before my perception on counseling was wrong
before. In this assignment, we had a lot of discussion, researches, interviews and role play about
counseling. In the interview part, I found that many people misunderstand or they have no
opinion about counseling. So, many people have wrong kind of thinking and beliefs about
counseling. After the interview, we have given some information about the counseling and they
have new information to think about what is counseling. From this assignment, I learnt that have
many people do not know or understand about counseling but we have learnt what counseling
and we can share our knowledge and information and let them know more about counseling.
Lastly, I have increased my communication skill with other people as I had to interview people
in public. I have learned than how to accept peoples rejection as they rejected to be interviewed.
I hope that more people will understand what is counseling and learn to accept that counseling is
a normal way to get some guidance.
Lee Ann Shin
In this assignment, I realized that actually not all the people know what is counseling, some even
have no idea about counseling. This is a very serious problem because when something
happened or the people around face some problems, they might not think that a counselor can
help or guide them. This may lead to the problems unsolved and they might become more
depressed or causes other related problems to emerge. Besides that, I had also learned that
interviewing public is not an easy task. People might reject or too shy to give some opinion in
public. Moreover, I had learned that different people will have different opinion. Everyone
comes from different state, different culture, different family background, and some even have
different level of understanding. So, having different opinion, different perspective or viewpoints
is a good thing as we can see things from different angle. Some of their opinion is helpful while
some are not so useable and some of them have no opinion towards. So, this is a call attention to
enhance the awareness and understanding of people about counseling.
Aw Yong Chia Chin
Throughout this assignment, we had done lots of online research, brainstorming, discussion and
interview, I found that in our country, counseling is something that is unfamiliar to people, most
of the people we interviewed did not know what is counseling about, including me before taking
this subject. In order to let counseling become popular, seep into peoples life, Psychology
students play an important role to promote it, to let people understand what is the word
counseling really means, to correct peoples wrong perception about it. Furthermore, I would
like to thanks my teammates for giving full cooperation and tolerance when doing this
assignment. Although it might have lots of mistakes or it is just not as good as others, but we did
our best. For the first time, I tried so hard to act like a counselor, deal with some special case and
come out with some solutions. We had made this task became so interesting and fun and we all
had a great time and experience in this assignment. Lastly, I make friends when interviewing
people about their perception of counseling, I learn how to communicate well with people, how
to speak politely with people when asking something from them. It was a great time.

Reference
Nystul, M. S. (2011). Introduction to counselling: An art and science perspective (4
th
ed.) Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.