Reflective Seeds by Counsellor Seyram

MYTHS ABOUT THE COUNSELLING PRACTICE This is the third and final part of our write-ups on What do you know about Counselling? In this post, we address some myths about the counselling practice and reasons why we need to debunk them. If you missed the first two posts, please read them via insert links; https://reflectiveseedsbycounsellorseyram.blogspot.com/2024/08/in-ring-of-life-what-do-you-know-about.html; https://reflectiveseedsbycounsellorseyram.blogspot.com/2024/07/in-ring-of-life-what-do-you-know-about.html A number of myths are associated with Counselling services and this breeds stigma sometimes and also prevents individuals who are in dire need of counselling from seeking out the service. We will discuss some of such myths and why it is important to diffuse them from our minds if we genuinely require counselling to boost our functionality. Myth 1: Counselling is giving advice. One of the biggest confusion and challenges associated with Counselling is the thought that it is adv...

As an evolving profession whose practice gained legislative act as late as 2013 in Ghana, the field of counselling seems fairly new to a large number of the Ghanaian population as compared to nationals of advanced countries where the discipline has taken root. Indeed, in a research conducted by Dzokoto et al. (2022) on cultural adaptations and Ghanaian response to psychotherapy practice, their participants who included counsellors reported some cultural barriers they had to navigate before offering therapy in Ghana. The barriers include clients seeing therapy as an unfamiliar resource, resistance due to mental illness stigma, linguistic barriers, hierarchical and age norms associated with help-seeking in providing therapeutic services, Charismatic Christian and African Cosmological Worldviews, cultural expectations of helping and family sit-ins. This is the second write-up on the three-part awareness creation series about the field of counselling. The current text highlights the releva...