Journal of Counseling Psychology

Older adults are especially unlikely to seek mental health services, and internalized stigma is a key reason why. However, little research has investigated which older adults are particularly likely to have stigma influence help-seeking. To address this, we tested whether perceived control (PC) moderates an internalized stigma model in which public stigma is internalized as self-stigma, which negatively predicts help-seeking attitudes and help-seeking intentions. We employed moderated mediation analysis of cross-sectional, secondary data from 348 psychologically distressed Canadian adults aged 65 years and older...

The researchers analyzed articles from two flagship counseling psychology journals (i.e., Journal of Counseling Psychology and The Counseling Psychologist ) to examine current understandings of resilience. There were 54 articles included in the final analysis that spanned the years 1997-2022. The researchers conducted a content analysis to identify, analyze, and report patterns across counseling psychology journals with regard to how resilience has been defined, the racial/ethnic groups that were of focus, and the forms of oppression that were studied or addressed...

The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which depression severity, gender, acculturation, and enculturation are associated with help-seeking attitudes among Arab/Middle Eastern North African (MENA) Americans. A hierarchical linear regression was conducted with a sample of 296 Arab/MENA participants (154 women and 142 men). After controlling for pertinent demographic variables, depression severity was negatively associated with help-seeking. Further, there was a significant three-way interaction between depression severity, gender, and enculturation on help-seeking attitudes...

Therapists' in-session feelings in psychotherapy can be seen as indications of the development of the therapeutic relationship and the therapeutic process. To manage them appropriately, it is important to know to what extent they may be influenced by patients' pretreatment characteristics. This study aims to improve the understanding of therapists' emotional reactions in the psychotherapeutic setting by investigating if patients' pretreatment mentalization ability and attachment style predicted therapist in-session feelings...

Vocational psychologists have called for greater attention to different forms of capital, any resource or asset that confers profit and power, to better understand the vocational development process, particularly for those who lack resources and power. However, previous research has had several conceptual and measurement limitations, such as the use of less inclusive frameworks; a focus on more privileged populations; and the overuse of categorical, dummy coded, and objective measures. To address these limitations, the present study aimed to (a) develop an inclusive, subjective, continuous, and multidimensional work capital scale and (b) validate the new scale with representative samples of working adults and job seekers across two studies...

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, devastating the archipelago and forcing thousands of Puerto Ricans to migrate to the U.S. mainland. Guided by a cultural stress theory framework, the present mixed method study examined how various cultural stressors impact participants' daily interactions and mental health outcomes. A total of 319 adult Hurricane Maria survivors residing on the U.S. mainland participated in the study. A mixed method sequential explanatory design was used...

Research suggests that a client's achievement goal orientation and alliance are important for positive treatment outcomes. However, it is currently unknown how a member's goal orientation and alliance in tandem relate to members' improvement in group therapy, despite conceptual wisdom regarding the additive effect of a high alliance and a mastery or approach goal orientation. Therefore, this study sought to examine the congruence between members' goal orientation and the member-group alliance on members' perceived improvement in group therapy...

The aims of this practice-based evidence study were to (a) examine clients' trajectories of psychological and spiritual distress over the course of spiritually integrated psychotherapies (SIPs) and (b) explore the role of varying types of spiritual interventions in these outcomes. In total, 164 practitioners of SIPs from 37 settings in a practice-research network administered the Clinically Adaptive Multidimensional Outcome Survey (Sanders et al., 2018) at each session with 1,227 clients and reported their use of theoretical orientations and spiritual interventions on an after-session summary checklist...

With an ever-diversifying population and society, intercultural dynamics has been a topic of interest for many years. This is especially true within the mental health profession, as the effects of clinician bias and behaviors on client outcomes have been studied and documented many times over. However, often times these studies focus on the White clinician and client of color dynamic, with focus on the White clinician's way of being or competency and the resulting perceptions of the client of color. The opposite dynamic, that of a clinician of color with a White client, has often been overlooked and ignored...

Testing an adapted psychology of working theory (PWT) model (PWT; Duffy et al., 2016), this study examined how and when contextual constraints affect the ability of Chinese rural migrant workers () to attain decent work. Surveying a sample of 510 employed Chinese rural migrants at two time points, this study revealed that economic constraints and daily discrimination were indirectly related to attaining decent work through the mediating factors of work volition and psychological ownership over work. In addition, proactive personality moderated the relationships between daily discrimination and economic constraints and the two mediators...

We sampled routinely collected measures of role and outcome expectations, the expanded therapeutic alliance, and relationship satisfaction completed by 253 heterosexual couples seen by 35 therapists in the Marriage and Family Research Practice Network (Johnson et al., 2017) and investigated these variables as interdependent dyadic processes using the latent congruence model (Cheung, 2009) and the mediated actor-partner interdependence model (Ledermann et al., 2011). Taken together, we found a direct association between a couple's mean role and outcome expectation scores at Session 1 and individual partners' alliance perceptions at Session 3...

Vocational interests have been an important concept for career decision making and counseling. However, while researchers have separately explored the criterion validity of interest congruence and the formation mechanism of interests, there has been little joint, interactive consideration of the two key aspects of interests. A key issue remains unclear: Could interests with different focal formation mechanisms have different consequences? Drawing on the motivation and vocational literature, this article first explains why it is possible and necessary to differentiate the formation mechanisms of interests in terms of motivational focus (intrinsic, extrinsic-autonomous, and extrinsic-controlled)...

The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of racial-ethnic-cultural (REC) belonging for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC). The iBelong Scale was designed to assess the multidimensional components of REC belonging across diverse BIPOC groups. The scale was constructed based on a grounded conceptual framework of REC belonging, and the initial pool of items received feedback from community members and content experts. Validation of the iBelong Scale comprised data from 808 BIPOC participants collected across three interrelated studies for the purposes of initial validation, construct validity, and test-retest reliability...

The desire to die by suicide has been linked with interpersonal difficulties and impeded clinical outcomes. Despite the emphasis on the therapeutic relationship in clinical guidelines for working with suicidal clients, little is known about how suicidal clients' interpersonal difficulties manifest in clinical contexts. Additionally, there is limited understanding of the therapeutic relationship in single-session suicidal crisis contexts. Our aim was to examine the trajectory of the therapeutic bond in mediating clients' suicidal desire and outcome in single-session suicidal crisis intervention...

Meditation apps are the most commonly used mental health apps. However, the optimal dosing of app-delivered meditation practice has not been established. We examined whether the distribution of meditation practices across a day impacted outcomes in a distressed population. We investigated the effects of meditation practice frequency in a 2-week compassion-based meditation intervention delivered via the Healthy Minds Program app. Undergraduates with clinically elevated depression and/or anxiety ( N = 351) were randomized to a massed (one 20-min meditation per day) or distributed condition (two 10-min meditations per day)...

Every year, millions of Americans do not receive needed mental health (MH) services. Although Pacific Islanders (PI) have a high need for MH services, this group has the lowest rate of MH care help seeking. This is especially concerning as the rate of suicide has been increasing within the PI community. This study explored how Pacific Islanders think about MH supports, including their attitudes toward and perceptions of barriers to receiving MH services. An interpretative phenomenological analysis focus group study was conducted with cross-generational Pacific Islanders residing in one western state...

The Journal of Counseling Psychology serves as the premier journal for critical and rigorous research within the field and beyond. In their inaugural editorial for Journa, Liu is joined by their associated editors and inaugural JCP fellows who have agreed to share authorship and their positionalities. In considering the Journal of Counseling Psychology for research, the editors encourage authors to reflect on these positionalities and how they might integrate their own into their publications. The editorial provides direction and some suggestions on submitted articles and research directions for JCP in the following areas: positionality and critical reflexivity; theoretical and conceptual advancement and clarity; body ideas, frameworks, and conceptualization; data clarity; and cultural validity of research instruments...

Experiences of nonbinary psychotherapists have largely gone unexamined in the present literature. Using critical-constructivist grounded theory, we explored the experiences of 13 nonbinary licensed psychotherapists through qualitative semistructured interviews. Interviews were an average of 1.36 hr, and participants were recruited via social media and professional listservs. We found that nonbinary therapists ground their professional praxis-the embodiment of professional theory, action, and practice-in identity across four interconnected areas: navigating minority stress, disclosing identity, utilizing identity , and centering anti-oppression ideologies ...

Sexual minority people report substance use at higher rates than their heterosexual peers. Workplace sexual identity management, defined as the process by which sexual minority persons disclose or conceal their identities at work, may exacerbate substance use under stressful conditions, such as when faced with incivility. However, there is a paucity of research on the relation of the work environment to sexual minority workers' substance use. The present study used the social cognitive career self-management model as a conceptual framework to examine two aspects of the work environment (positive climate and harassment) in relation to the sexual identity management process and substance use of sexual minority workers...

Using longitudinal client and therapist working alliance ratings, previous research examined how alliance: average value, linear growth, variability, stability (autocorrelation), and partner responsiveness were associated with client outcome. However, no research simultaneously examined all of these dimensions. Omitting important variables in analyses could lead to overestimation of related effects. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine these effects simultaneously. Therapists ( N = 45) and clients ( N = 236) rated alliance after every session ( N = 10,720) and clients completed a measure of psychological distress after every eighth session...