Helping Young Clients Transition From Post-Secondary School

Posted by: Andrea Cashman on August 26, 2015 5:00 am

Many of the young clients that come into my office seem to be struggling with making the transition from post-secondary school into the real world. They are the young adults who have just successfully graduated from their College or University programs but struggle to make the next step. The reason behind their hesitation is not what you may think it is initially. Many of them struggle to even get past putting in applications for job postings. The job search terrifies them not because there is a lack of jobs necessarily but because they do not feel good enough or they completely feel lost on what career is for them. Struggling with self-identity or self-esteem issues is what holds them back. I’ve even seen clients who have entered into programs that their parents have picked out for them. These young adults feel trapped in a world that doesn’t hold true to themselves. Regardless, the question remains the same: why are these young adults suffering a transitional crisis so early on? We mostly hear jokes and passings about mid-life crises. We hear frequently about empty nest transition crises. However, we rarely hear about young people suffering a crisis in their 20’s. This is often referred to as a quarter life crisis. Continue reading →

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

Dungeons and Dragons: The Wii Habilitation of Video Game Therapy

Posted by: Priya Senroy on July 12, 2013 1:03 pm

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Hello readers!

I hope that you are spending as much time as outdoors as possible whenever you are able to take time away from work or in my case from video games. Am I getting addicted…..hope not but playing Dungeons and Dragons has definitely picked my curiosity and all this because I wanted to research it for a case. A client of mine has been grappling with cyber addiction and in my quest to find out what it is….I have succumbed to it too..

Interestingly…..it’s not as bad as it seems. Did you know that Video games have found their way into the clinical care of youth in most medical fields, and academic interest in their use is increasing steadily? The popularity of video games among youth may qualify them as a useful tool in psychotherapy for children and adolescents (Ceranoglu., 2010). In fact, psychotherapists and counselors have started using this medium as an assessment, intervention as well as rehabilitative tool while working with adolescent clients. Now I found that there were not much research available in this area and there were few article on this subject so there is not evidence based practice to support the efficacy.

Studies have been conducted using it to teach focusing skills to children with ADD to using it as a rehabilitative tool while working with patients with Parkinson’s disease, In fact it called Wii Habilitation.

But what interested me the most was a portion of an article which states that certain games, which are still in clinical trial have physiological sensors that are built into the game hardware which allows players to learn how to monitor the physiological manifestations of anxiety and stress, or what is commonly called their “fight or flight” response. The players use those same sensors as controllers to move themselves through the game by monitoring and controlling their characters and the stress responses they represent ( Sugarman, 2011).

So with the new found knowledge I am trying to discover for myself the ‘benefits’ of being a gamer , get better understanding of my client as well as use it as a part of my counselling tools and techniques

Tag Archives: adolescent psychotherapy