As front-line counsellors, we spend a lot of our expertise with our clients and I think it’s important to share the successes with other practitioners too. Not only contributing via articles, journals and chapters adds to the CEC piece but it also helps to stay abreast of the current trends, researchers and best practices in our fields.

This spring has been a exciting time for me as a counsellor from a professional development point of view. I have been working on 2 chapters for some time and it’s exciting to see they have been published. Use of Creative Therapies in Treating Depression, edited by Stephanie Brooke and Charles Myers is a comprehensive work that examines the use of art, play, music, dance/movement, drama, and animals as creative approaches to treating depression.

The book can be viewed at http://www.ccthomas.com/details.cfm?P_ISBN13=9780398081485

The editors’ primary purpose is to examine treatment approaches, which cover the broad spectrum of the creative art therapies and the reader is provided with a snapshot of how these various creative art therapies are used to treat children and adults diagnosed with depression.  The book is extremely resourceful, insightful and draws from evidence based practice and research.  I had the honor of sharing my work in the form of a case study using masks and the sesame approach of drama therapy with South Asian women recovering from depression.

So my encouragement to my fellow counsellors would be to please share your work with a broader audience and take up writing and contributing. The labor is worth it when you see your work being published and used as references. It is also worth it to know that the work, the client groups and the career we have chosen are validated.

*The views expressed by our authors are personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA