Essay On Human Services Theory

It is important for a Human Service worker to be familiar with the current and widely used theories. Theories can help the Human Services worker plan treatment for a client and decide which direction they want to would like to go with a particular client. Some of the theories that will be examined throughout this paper include Behavior Therapy, Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Family Systems Therapy. An analysis of the theories used within the Human Services field, helps individuals that are new to the field, like myself, pick the theory that suites them best.

After reading the assigned chapter on developing your integrative counseling orientation, I have determined that my personal counseling style is founded in behavior therapy.

Another description of cognitive therapy is that it is a short-term, cost-efficient form of psychotherapy. The theoretical support from which cognitive therapy come include three core sources. The first being the intentional approach to psychotherapy. The second being structural and depth psychology. The last approach is cognitive psychology (Howatt,

There are invisible sets of rules or functional demands organizing the way members of a family relate to one another. The goal of structural family therapy is to “bring about change (and)… reorganize the system by getting members to move from one place to another, from one role to another.” Therefore, the goals of structural family therapy are to reduce symptoms of dysfunction and to bring about structural change within the system by modifying the family’s transactional rules, and developing more appropriate boundaries. The role of the structural family therapy counselor involves three interactive functions: joining the family in a position of leadership; mapping its underlying structure; and intervening in ways designed to transform an ineffective structure (Howatt,