Counselor–Advocate–Scholar Model: Changing the Dominant Discourse in Counseling

Abstract

Discourse represents the languages, ideas, and images that together shape one's understanding of the world. In counseling, discourse determines clinical practice. The authors posit that dominant discourse in counseling promotes an intrapsychic status quo that discounts the relationship between individuals and their environment, which often leads to office‐bound interventions that are inadequate in addressing issues of oppression. The counselor–advocate–scholar model (Ratts & Pedersen, ) is introduced to expand current discourse to include advocacy and research to better address systems of oppression. El discurso representa los idiomas, ideas e imágenes que, en su conjunto, dan forma a nuestra comprensión del mundo. En la consejería, el discurso determina la práctica clínica. Los autores proponen que el discurso dominante en la consejería promueve un status quo intrapsíquico que no tiene en cuenta la relación entre los individuos y su medio, lo que con frecuencia lleva a intervenciones limitadas a la oficina que no resuelven de forma adecuada los problemas relacionados con la opresión. Se introduce el modelo consejero‐defensor‐investigador (Ratts & Pedersen, ) para expandir el discurso actual de forma que incluya la defensoría e investigación, y así abordar mejor los sistemas de opresión.

Analyzing the Impact of the Medicare Coverage Gap on Counseling Professionals: Results of a National Study

“…Counselors have a long history of engagement with social policy and legislative advocacy (Kiselica & Robinson, 2001), and social justice has been described as an essential characteristic of what it means to be a counselor (Chang, Crethar, & Ratts, 2010). In more recent years, a great deal of attention has been paid to cultivating social justice advocacy within counselor training curricula, with expressed goals such as identifying how exemplar counselor advocates develop (Swartz, Limberg, & Gold, 2018) and creating new models for how advocacy identity might be synthesized with counselor and scholar identities (Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018). The growth of the social justice advocacy movement within the counseling profession has clear implications for the issue of Medicare reimbursement for counselors.…”

Medicare Reimbursement for Counselors: Counseling Professionals’ Advocacy Beliefs and Behavior

“…In sum, our results provide a much‐needed baseline against which to measure the counseling profession’s commitment to advocacy, as well as the specific impacts on advocacy attitudes and behaviors that result from efforts to infuse advocacy and social justice into counselor education (Decker et al, 2016; Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018). Our data suggest that in spite of progress made in the 17 years since the ACA Advocacy Competencies were first endorsed (Lewis et al, 2003), there is more work to be done.…”

Understanding HIV Prevention With College‐Going Black Women: An NIMH‐Funded Pilot Study

“…Using an intersectional approach can assist counselors in better understanding that the individuals we treat are complex and are not defined only by race or only by gender. Another promising model to use is the counselor–advocate–scholar model (Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018), which requires therapists to determine the nature of the client’s problems (i.e., biological, psychological, and/or sociological), not just the presenting problem or behavior itself.…”