Wellness, Resilience, and Prevention

• Analyze the evolution of the key philosophies of wellness, resilience, and prevention.

• Examine a part of the counseling history of your field that interests you and analyze the events that contributed to the emergence of the specialization.

• Be sure to cite your references appropriately using APA formatting.

The key philosophies of wellness, resilience, and prevention seek to make the individual self able to bounce back from difficult situations or make necessary adjustments. Wellness refers to a mental and physical stability. Resilience is the ability to recover from a situation. Prevention seeks to stop or decrease the frequency of an event. Wellness dates back to the early days of Aristotle. Several resilience models have derived since the late 1980’s “with the majority of resilience theories being specific to particular population” (Fletcher & Sarkar 2013). Professional counselors seek to encourage wellness, a positive state of well –being, and through developmental, preventative, and wellness-enhancing interventions (Myers & Sweeney 2008).

The part of mental health that may interest the learner is the need for it to be continuum based. Historically, people who could benefit from mental health services were viewed as distinctly different from those who would be considered “healthy” (Smith, Howard, & Gail 1990). Ensuring mental health stability is not only for the “sick” but for all individuals. The learner must ensure ability to cope with life stressors to decrease burnout. The theory of burnout dates back to the 1980’s. The main component of burnout is emotional exhaustion (Lent & Schwartz 2012). The learner will benefit from fully understanding the causes of burnout and ways to prevent it. A key to preventing burnout is for the learner to become self aware and acknowledge own body signs. Prevention in the field of mental health counseling and other counseling fields are continually being reviewed.

Fletcher, David & Sarkar, Mustafa (2013)....