Personal Therapy as a Mandatory Requirement for Counselling Students and Its Outcomes in Selected Universities in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

Personal therapy is experienced as a mandatory requirement in many counselling and psychotherapy trainings worldwide with the view that it yields positive outcomes in terms of personal and professional developments. However, some counseling students think this is not beneficial in their training. This study therefore assessed mandatory personal therapy and its outcomes among counseling students in the selected universities in Nairobi, Kenya. It was guided by the general objective to assess the counseling outcomes of mandatory personal therapy among counseling students in the selected universities in Nairobi County, Kenya. This study was also guided by Resistance Theory of Jack W. Brehm and the ABC Model of Albert Ellis. This study used Concurrent Design. The target population was all the 635 postgraduate counseling students in the selected universities in Nairobi County. The total sample size was 255 participants. An online questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 245 counseling students while interview guide administered both virtually and face to face were used to collect quantitative data from ten counseling students, five counselor educators, and five professional counselors. The Quantitative data was descriptively analyzed by frequencies and percentages while narrative, content, and thematic analysis were used to analyze the interviews. The findings showed that majority of the counseling students have positive perception of personal therapy as a mandatory requirement in their training; that personal therapy as a mandatory requirement contributed to their personal development in terms of selfawareness and general wellbeing; it also contributed to their professional development where they witness theories in practice, learned counseling skills and techniques, used personal therapy for self-care, and will likely continue personal therapy after completing the mandatory requirement. However, personal therapy as a mandatory requirement was initially confronted with reactance and reluctance by most of the students. These attitudes were later changed through, self-determination, psychoeducation by the faculty members and their therapists, and therapeutic alliance formed with their therapists. Findings also revealed that there were some ethical issues of violation of right and freedom of students, dual relationship, and disingenuousness which require attention of the faculty members and professional therapists attending to these students. It was recommended that the faculty should ensure proper monitoring of the process of personal therapy to be ethically compliance.