Counselling children often requires the use of supplementary strategies in order to interest and engage the child in the therapeutic process. One such strategy is the Metaphorical Fruit Tree (MFT); an art metaphor suited to exploring and developing self-concept. Quantitative and qualitative data was used to explore the relationships between children's ability to use metaphor, age, gender, and level of emotional competence (N = 58). Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed a significant negative relationship between self-reported emotional competence and ability to use the MFT. It is proposed that children rely on different processes to understand self and as children's ability to cognitively report on their emotional capabilities via the Emotional Competence Questionnaire (ECQ) increases, their ability to report creatively on those capabilities via the MFT is undermined. It is suggested that the MFT may be used, via creative processes and as an alternative to cognitive processes, to increase understanding and awareness of intrapersonal and interpersonal concepts of self in the child during counselling.

The Three Approaches to Psychotherapy (TAP) videotape series introduces students to three major schools of psychotherapy: client-centered therapy, Gestalt therapy, and rational–emotive therapy. A sample of undergraduate students viewed the TAP series. The students were surveyed about their observations of Gestalt therapy and Fritz Perls' interactions with and treatment of Gloria, the client. This importance of the film series is its presentation of psychotherapy as done in that time by the founders of these schools. Videotapes are routinely employed educationally to show therapy techniques and illuminate theory. This paper examines the usefulness of this video to teach gestalt therapy to psychology students in four sections — two underclass and two upper class sections — in the same term. Student perceptions of this 40-year-old film series are explored. The gender relationship of therapist and client is shown as an example of the apparent sexism of the culture and cognitive processes of the time and its participants. Results found to today's instructionally sophisticated students agreed with Perls' explanation and portrayal of gestalt therapy and interactions with Gloria, his adult client.

The aim of the study was to investigate the knowledge of Turkish high school counsellors and counselling students about adolescence suicide. The sample consisted of 71 school counsellors and 82 third and fourth year psychology counselling students who completed the Adolescent Suicide Behavior Questionnaire. The results showed that although counselling students have more knowledge than school counsellors, both groups are not well informed about adolescent suicide, with many school counsellors and counselling students unable to determine the risk, precipating and demographic factors and differential warning signs of adolescent suicide in Turkey.

Knowledge of the needs of graduate counselling students can assist counsellor education faculty in understanding the unique concerns of this student population and thus assist in the development of adjunct services to address these important issues. This study compared the needs of graduate counselling students from the United States (U.S.) and Nigeria and found that they shared many of the same concerns, with time management as the highest-ranked concern. The implications of these results may help guide all counsellor education faculty in planning to assist students.

The aim of the study was to establish the Lakaev Academic Stress Response Scale (LASRS; Lakaev, 2006) as a valid and reliable measure of stress responses. The sample consisted of 375 Bond University students from several countries (142 Australia, 5 New Zealand, 68 United States, 8 Canada, 65 Asian, 66 Europe and 21 other) and from various levels of tertiary education (266 undergraduate and 109 postgraduate). Participants completed six self-report questionnaires that related to, acculturative stress, somatic stress symptoms, academic stress, stress responses, extraversion and general stress in order to determine convergent and divergent validity. The LASRS was shown to have sound psychometric properties and was suggested to be a sound way of measuring academic stress responses, particularly for Australian students. The results are discussed in terms of past tertiary academic stress research and suggestions for future investigations.

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a didactic stress management program, group counselling, and a control group on school counsellors' stress coping strategies. Thirty-four school counsellors were randomly assigned to either a didactic stress management group, group counselling, or a control group. The didactic stress management group and the group counselling for stress management group were conducted concurrently for 10 consecutive weeks. A control group received no treatment. The Ways of Coping Inventory was administered to all participants at three different stages: pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at 6-month follow-up. The results indicated that both the didactic stress management group and the group counselling for stress management group showed a significant reduction in the use of helpless coping strategies and a significant increase in the optimistic coping strategies at post-treatment. At follow-up, there were obvious group differences in the use of helpless coping strategies. Only those who were treated using group counselling exhibited a decrease in helpless coping strategies at the follow-up assessment.