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.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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