Counseling and Motivational Interviewing in Speech-language Pathology

Book excerpt: "The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association identifies counseling as one of the eight domains of speech-language pathology service delivery. Two of the remaining seven domains, collaboration and prevention and wellness, are closely related to and draw upon counseling skillsets. While our discipline clearly recognizes the importance of counseling in training and everyday practice, ASHA provides limited direction about implementation within curriculum and clinical practice. This is a textbook on implementation and training of counseling and motivational interviewing for speech-language pathologists. The material is suitable for graduate-level training programs and practicing speech-language pathologists. The book provides a strong focus on implementation of counseling practices, rather than discussion of counseling practices. Specifically, there is an emphasis on Motivational Interviewing along with description of other evidence-based counseling practices in SLP. There is currently not a counseling text in our discipline that focuses on motivational interviewing, despite a recent uptick in empirical investigations using this approach. Additionally, the book addresses issues of scope of practice and why SLPs are uniquely suited to provide counseling. While providing a clear distinction between professional counseling and non-professional counseling, this text clarifies the SLPs role"--