Wellness In Health And Social Care Essay

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Counseling is a wellness-oriented, strengths-based approach to optimizing human growth and development and counselors are thoroughly trained in a positive, holistic philosophy allowing them to act as advocates for optimum health and wellness in society. Counseling is set apart from other professions focused on care because of its developmental, prevention, and wellness orientation towards helping (McAulife & Eriksen, 1999). Wellness refers to the maximizing of human potential through positive life style choices and offers a philosophical base for counseling and development that provides guidelines for intervention and at the same time emphasizes the uniqueness to counseling and development professionals in dealing with mental health concerns. Wellness is a holistic concept in its pursuit of optimal health for the individual, family and community as a whole and is a strategy for living that seeks to achieve the highest level of positive participation that an individual can achieve in his or her life (Myers, 1991). Consistent with its holistic orientation, wellness has been defined as involving social, intellectual,…show more content…
Compounding the great stresses of modern life, many people eventually encounter special challenges that put their mental health and support systems at risk (Bonanno, 2004). Common challenges facing many in society are the death of a loved one, family dissolution, and living with someone who is chronically ill or suffering from a major mental health condition (Prilleltensky, I., & Nelson, G., 2002). Even extraordinary stresses like domestic abuse, street crime, natural disasters, and war pose a persistent threat to wellness in today’s world. Mental health and wellness counseling focuses heavily in developing the resiliency and the necessary coping skills to deal with such challenges (Wu, G., Feder, A., Cohen, H., Kim, J. , Calderon, S., Charney, D. S., & Mathé, A. A.,

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