One of my interests in mental health care is psychopathology, which makes it a bit easier to integrate it into client care. I also have an interest in trauma, which is linked to many types of psychopathology.

When thinking about counsellors and psychologist that specialize in certain psychopathologies or types of therapy, a lot of them pick their specialty based off their area of interest. Because I have a passion for trauma and crisis, CBT was an obvious chose for me as there is lots of research around the use of CBT and trauma, crisis and suicide (TF-CBT, CBT-SP, Crisis-focused CBT, CBTp). CBT is used for multiple types of psychopathologies, so it is helpful to know for multiple mental illness.

Another interest of my is acting and singing, which was my career path as a youth. In my social work program, this lead me to taking a placement in an arts-based therapeutic center. In this program, I got to teach singing, acting, dance and ASL through arts therapy based interventions, which I really enjoyed.

What are some other ways you can integrate your outside interests in counselling? Please include intext citations and references.