Introduction

Psychological impacts can affect any person in workplace environment. Effectiveness of psychological counselling and cognitive therapy can be fruitful for the employees. The assignment is focused on critical analysis of the two peer- reviewed papers, which have discussed psychological and mental health implication of cognitive therapy. The first paper has focused on the effect of psychological counselling on the employees of work place environment. The second paper has discussed about the approaches of client and the counsellors. The paper focused on self-realisation and concepts regarding psychological issues of a client.

Discussion

This article is written for analysing the effectiveness of workplace counselling as an example of good practice to maintain the work place standard.  John McLeod, the author of research paper, focuses on identification of the client satisfaction, negative impact of circumstances, work behaviours and meaning of work in workplace. He focuses on the overview of a  research in the  area of workplace counselling.  

In this article, the author has developed a concept of workplace counselling and client satisfaction. In two broad categories of the workplace counselling intervention can be  identified to solve  work  related  psychological problems .These  categories  can determine  the interventions or  therapy which is required  for reducing  the work related stress. First category was to determine the frequency internal (in-house) and external (externally delivered services) services which are provided by a workplace. The second category of workplace counselling includes the inter-personal conversation between the interviewer and the employees and effect of the communication on the work outcome.   EPA programme is an example of external service which is provided by an organisation for their employees. This programme is compared with the in-house service related to counselling and its effective outcome. The workplace counselling consists of employees who need to talk to psychologist or therapist independently or through their workplace. The findings of this review are divided into four key domain such as “client satisfaction”, “psychological functioning”, and “meaning of work”, “work behaviour”. The substantial evidence have been discussed throughout this paper with the reference of these four categories or domains. Client satisfaction is related to various aspects of a workplace. This article has shown that different evidence is present to support client satisfaction for workplace counselling services and agencies. The article supports the fact that client are able to rate their satisfactory level and face the reviews related to the ratings. EAP can elevate protest among employees during provision of that framework in the workplace (Joyce et al., 2016).

Another domain for categorising the findings is the impacts of counselling on employees’ psychological functioning. Different factors can affect the mental well-being of employees and the factors are related to the level of stress and other symptoms among employees. In this systematic review, it has been found that factors for stress are measured with the help of symptom checklists or screening instrument for mental health difficulties. At the beginning and end of the counselling, psychologists use these instrument with continuous the follow-ups (McLeod, 2010; pp 240). The assessment process can organised at starting and at the end of the counselling or follow-ups. Depression is associated with patterns of low motivation, self-withdrawal from work and fatigue. The employees can face hopelessness and low performances with lack of attentiveness. Reduction of anxiety and burnout have been discussed. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorders), low self-esteem and substance abuse.  Counsellors can resolve the problems related to alcohol and drug abuse. The mental health and social scenario can affect psychological health and work performances (Gutner et al., 2016). The superiority of the therapeutic alliance (TA) has been involved to clarify the equivalent efficiency of different psychotherapies (Goldsmith et al., 2015).

The Effective size is one of the parameter for assessments of interventions and good quality outcomes. Outcomes of pre and post counselling values are used as determinants of quality measurement of the study and two independent factors which were used in checklist developed by Downs and Black (1998), are applied for assessment. The level of impact of workplace counselling related to overall Effect Size represents the quality of outcomes and reviews of the study which are described in the comparison of impact of workplace counselling on psychological functioning. The behaviours of employees are important for the reflection of mind-set of the workers. The research has been conducted to understand the effectiveness of workplace counselling in the on different aspects of work behaviours of the employees such as productivity, frequency of accidents and staff retention. Author found that results related to staff retention, reduction of productivity and number of employees have been explained whereas no result related to improvement of self-rating of work performance has been observed. According to Michie (1997), changes related to self-rating improvements after counselling have not been observed. Job satisfaction, motivation, relationship with the co-workers, administration of the organisation are the factors, which can be resulted from counselling. Counselling can reduce absent rate in 20-60% and probability of accidents of employees. 5-10% people did not find any improvement after course of treatment and deterioration can be happened (Rozental et al., 2017).

Effectiveness of psychological counselling can improve the work culture and enhance productivity of employees. The posttraumatic therapies can be effective for the employees and employers of a workplace. Another report considers that negative outcomes can observe in 8% of employees in UK. Confidentiality, commercial competition, organisational goals affecting experiences of employees are negative impacts, which are identified in the paper.

Carl Roger was an American psychologist and one of the main founders of humanistic approach of psychology. He is coined the idea of person centred therapy in counselling. This research paper is focused on the client centred therapy and non-directive approach of clinical psychology. The author of the article supported the concept of client centred therapy, relationship between client centred therapy and therapeutic treatment. The researcher addressed implications of client centred therapy. The author described different approaches of client centred therapy in the clinical psychology with different challenges and opportunities. The paper elaborates different conditions of the process of client-centred therapy, capacity of client and nature of the client centeredness in therapeutic relation.

The researcher emphasized on the therapeutic approach of play therapy, puppet therapy and other experiences have been described in this article. Author found information and details about the counsellor’s approaches. Author described the capacity of client in the context of counselling and therapeutic relationship. According to the study, there are different therapeutic functions which described the capacity of the client using their internal force for catalysing strength and weakness.  The authors emphasized on the processes except catharsis and emotional release to understand client’s mind set for effective interventions. According to the article, the counsellor help the clients in effective communication for better results. The article focuses on the responsibilities of counsellors in the process of therapy and how client should be conditioned with the interaction. The author also stated the procedures which should be followed by the counsellors after all the primary condition of counselling are met.  They help clients with better perspective and clear conception for better understanding of mental health. Clear concepts and realisations can help counsellor for better understanding of responsibility and their goals. The article has revealed different incidents of clients and concepts for the mental health. Counsellors need to consider the approaches of thinking patterns after comparing the other approaches of clinical counselling. According to the author counsellors need to understand the meaning of “the client’s hour” in the process of counselling. Understanding clients pace is one of the biggest task for a counsellor.  This paper has analysed the predictability and non-predictability theory for client-centred therapy.

According to this paper the growth forces are related to the self-actualisation of client. Self-actualisation is the capacity of assessing own positive and negative sides, acceptance of oneself in a positive and effective way. On the other hand, the term self-actualisation is associated with the state of congruence.  The article emphasizes that individual should explore his or her approaches and relationships with sense of realization. Individual can analyse their problems with sensitivity and better approaches. Therapeutic analysis and approach of the researcher can help a client with better understanding. According to the researcher counsellor might discard the previous methods for different indicative and non-indicative therapy but he admitted that the control for counselling is retained at the hand of counsellor.  Therefore he needs to increase or promote the client’s insight and confidence. The clients cannot understand the capacity of individual through attitudes and behaviours, which are affected by external factors. The human nature is adaptive towards creative and imaginative perspective of an individual insight.

Conclusion

The comparative analysis of two papers has concluded that psychological analysis by experts can help individual’s analytical ability. Comprehensiveness and conceptualization can help a person for better understanding of their situations. Approaches of counsellor and the clients can increase the productiveness of counselling.

References

Goldsmith, L. P., Lewis, S. W., Dunn, G.,and  Bentall, R. P. (2015). Psychological treatments for early psychosis can be beneficial or harmful, depending on the therapeutic alliance: an instrumental variable analysis. Psychological medicine, 45(11), 2365-2373.

Gutner, C.A., Gallagher, M.W., Baker, A.S., Sloan, D.M. and Resick, P.A., 2016. Time course of treatment dropout in cognitive–behavioral therapies for posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 8(1), p.115.

Joyce, S., Modini, M., Christensen, H., Mykletun, A., Bryant, R., Mitchell, P.B. and Harvey, S.B., 2016. Workplace interventions for common mental disorders: a systematic meta-review. Psychological medicine, 46(4), pp.683-697.

McLeod, J., 2010. The effectiveness of workplace counselling: A systematic review. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 10(4), pp.238-248.

Reme, S. E., Grasdal, A. L., Løvvik, C., Lie, S. A., and Øverland, S. (2015). Work-focused cognitive–behavioural therapy and individual job support to increase work participation in common mental disorders: a randomised controlled multicentre trial. Occup Environ Med, 72(10), 745-752.

Rogers, C. R. (1946). Significant aspects of client-centred therapy. American Psychologist, 1(10), 415-422.

Rozental, A., Magnusson, K., Boettcher, J., Andersson, G. and Carlbring, P., 2017. For better or worse: An individual patient data meta-analysis of deterioration among participants receiving Internet-based cognitive behavior therapy. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 85(2), p.160.