Using Social Networks in Counseling

Social support: Implications for counselling

“…Several structured activities (Ashinger, 1985;Gottlieb, 1983Gottlieb, , 1984 have been developed to guide people through the process of assessing their social resources, explore their perceptions of the types and quality of the support they give and receive, and plan changes that might strengthen the supportive aspects of their lives. In an activity described by Gottlieb (1984), clients are asked to map their primary social networks along certain structural dimensions including size, composition, degree of connectedness (density), and along specific process dimensions including types of helping exchanges, degree of reciprocity in these exchanges, and levels of relational intimacy.…”