The effectiveness of an indigenous counseling approach to economic problems: An exploratory study

• Main Author: Velazco, Gundelina A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1991
• Subjects: Counseling; Economics > Psychological aspects; Psychology, Applied; Psychotherapy; Counseling Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/674
• Institution: De La Salle University

Serious economic problems continue to beset Philippine society, making most of the problems of Filipino counselees at least, in part economic in nature. While psychologists and counselors agree that there is a need to combine economic understanding and psychological insight, the actual lack of economics orientation and content in current counseling approaches has been a deterrent to counselors' handling economic problems in the counseling room. As a response to this problem, the researcher develops a counseling approach called economics counseling which integrates economic concepts, tools and principles in counseling, in order to deal with economic problems in a third-world country like the Philippines. This is a process and outcome study that determines the effectiveness of economics counseling in terms of: expanding awareness of the problem and promoting will to develop and desire for control and direction, as reported by the counselee improving social performance and functioning, as reported by a significant other and improving emotional well-being, as measured by the counselor.The subjects of this study consisted of five counselees who were having a high degree of anxiety because of economic problems. Two counseling sessions were done for each counselee. Pre-counseling (one week before counseling sessions), immediate post counseling (one day after the counseling sessions), the delayed post counseling (one month after the counseling sessions) assessments revealed that in all of the counselees, there was improvement in the following factors from pre-counseling to post-counseling: problem awareness, will to develop and desire for control and direction, social performance and functioning, and emotional well-being. Such improvements were either maintained or further improved 30 days after the counseling sessions. It can be concluded that economics counseling can join the ranks of existing counseling techniques and can be used to help counselees with economic problems.