Author Description

The sixth edition of this seminal textbook offers an updated model for aspiring helping professionals to enhance their clinical skills. Significant updates to this edition include: new interactive features to improve student learning, including self-reflection exercises to help them cultivate their own values and perspectives as helpers and role-play activities for hands-on learning; updated case examples and reflection questions that reflect a broad range of diversity among clients and providers; a shift from a stage-based model to a more fluid, goal-based model of helping skills; and empirical updates that help students understand the importance of tailoring interventions to clients’ individual needs. Clara Hill’s helping skills model consists of three main goals—exploration, insight, and action—in which helpers guide clients in exploring their thoughts and feelings, discovering the origins and consequences of maladaptive thoughts and behaviors, and creating positive long‑term change. This easy-to-read guide synthesizes Hill’s extensive clinical and classroom experience with fresh, unique insights from coauthors Harold Chui and Judy Gerstenblith. They teach fundamental theory and provide students with clinical skills, challenge them to think critically about the helping process, and enable them to develop their own unique approach to helping clients.