Introduction to Social Sciences

• Social sciences are academic disciplines studying humanity, society, and politics.
• Social sciences aid in understanding societal functions, the causes of socio-economic issues, and factors influencing behavior.
• The social sciences offer a foundation for policy creation and implementation in government and non-governmental organizations.

Social Sciences Defined

• Disciplines systematically examine social phenomena.
• It studies human society, behavior, and interpersonal relationships within it.
• It's a branch of science dealing with institutions and societal functioning.

Applied Social Sciences

• Draw from social science theories (e.g., in psychology, sociology, political science) for critical societal analysis.
• Applied social sciences develop skills for practical solutions to societal issues.
• The applied social sciences enable students to conduct studies on societal realities.
• They prepare students to analyze pressing social, economic, political, and ecological issues.
• Applied social sciences prepare students to be effective leaders.
• Applied social science is an integrated science addressing issues in a contemporary, innovative, and dynamic way.
• It aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of social systems, theory, and policy.
• Applied social science integrates theory, research, skills, and critical thinking needed to address social phenomena.

Relationship Between Social Sciences and Applied Social Science

• Social sciences focus on specific aspects of social phenomena.
• Applied social science focuses on distinct issues using insights from various social science disciplines.
• Some social science inputs readily apply to problems, while others stay theoretical.
• Applied social science is achieved when social science theories, concepts and methods are used to solve societal problems.

Academic Disciplines in the Social Sciences

• Political Science studies states and their elements (people, territory, government, sovereignty), focusing on decision-making and governance.
• Economics analyzes how individuals interact to address issues of resource use, production, and exchange.
• A popular economics course is Philippine Government and Politics.
• Economics studies issues such as poverty, development, government finances, international trade.
• Demography studies population changes, including migration, urbanization, and the relation to development.
• Demography uses statistical tools to analyze population data, birth/death rates, and employment levels.
• Geography studies the world, its people, and communities and focuses on human activities and their impact.
• Anthropology studies human origins, cultural/physical characteristics, and social norms.
• Linguistics is the scientific study of language structure and function.
• Law studies rules formulated and implemented by governments to maintain order and equity.
• The Constitution is a fundamental subject of law.
• History studies the human past to understand contemporary society and examines events, structures, and achievements.
• Public Administration deals with implementing public policies enacted by government agencies.
• Psychology studies the human mind and behavior to develop interventions that improve behavior.
• Sociology is the systematic study of society and social relations to understand how individuals relate and function.
• Social Work addresses community needs by linking people with resources and helping them develop self-sufficiency.
• Communication addresses human communication processes and the interpretation of messages based on contexts.
• Development Studies tackles social and economic issues in underdeveloped and developing nations.
• Environmental Planning encourages decisions that balance human and natural systems effectively and transparently.
• Social Policy is concerned with how societies respond to people's needs, usually focusing on the economy.
• Statistics involves data collection, organization, and analysis to present information and make inferences, which describes societal characteristics.

Fields of Applied Social Science

• Counselling draws from Psychology and Behavioral sciences to improve mental health by addressing emotional problems.
• Social Work seeks to improve welfare in communities by using social and behavioral sciences.
• Communication involves the sharing of symbols to create meaning through conversations and mass media.

Counseling

• Consists of:
  • Behavior: changes in actions, decision-making, and interaction skills are achieved.
  • Beliefs: Ways of thinking are changed and emotional concerns are addressed.
  • Level of emotional distress: Feelings and reactions to stress are addressed and improved.
• Functions of Counseling:
  • Advice: Counselors may give advice after careful consideration of a client's problems with the need to avoid a relationship in which client's start to feel inferior.
  • Reassurance: Counselors offer reassurance to clients, providing them with courage and confidence, which bring a sense of relief to empowers clients.
  • Release of Emotional Tension: Counseling allows clients to release frustrations and personal issues and allows clients will be more relaxed which can remove mantal blocks.
  • Clarified Thinking: Clarified thinking takes place during the counselilng relationship which then allows clients to accept the responsibility of there problems.
  • Reorientation: Involves a change in the client's emotional self through a change in basic goals and aspirations.
  • Listening Skills: Counselor's listen to understand both the content and emotions of the client's problem to see it from there perspectives.
  • Respect: Counselors are to treat there clients with respect no matter how different they are from them.
  • Empathy and Positive Regard: Combined empathy and positive regard as 2 principals that should go along with respect and effective listening skills.
  • Clarification, Confrontation, and Interpretation: Counselor attempts to restart what the client is saying or feeling to understand the issue better.
  • Transference and Countertransference: Helps clients understand transference to gain awareness of there actions.

Goals of Counseling

• Facilitating Behavior Change: Aims to have clients live more productively and satisfactory lives.
• Improving the client's ability to establish and maintain relationships: Helps clients overcome difficulties in their interpersonal relastionships.
• Enhancing the client's effectiveness and ability to cope: Clients learn to cope and adapt to change.
• Promoting the decision-making process: Helps clients make decisions by exploring aspects of the self and identifying consequences.
• Facilitating client potential and development: Maximizes client potential and ensure the clients growth.

The Counselor

• A trained professional provides therapy through communication.

Attributes and Values of a Counselor

• Genuine desire to help the client, experienced by the client throughout.
• Possess excellent therapeutic communication skills.
• The working alliance between counselor and client or counselling bond.

Core Conditions

• Empathy: understand anothers experience a if it were your own.
• Congruence or Genuineness: actions constantly reflect thoughts and feelings.
• Uncoditional positive regard: care for the client without setting conidtions
• Concreteness: using clear language to describe the cleints life situation.

Stages of Counseling

• The Third Stage: Commitment to action were the cleint decides how to accomplish the goals to find the best outcome.

Directive Counseling

• Directing a client to act on his or her problems.

Counseling as a Profession

• Child development and cousneling etc.
• There is a need for specialization

Roles of Guidance Counselors

• help people in realizing a change in behavior and attitude.
• assist them to seek goals, find help, teach social skills, have effective communication, have spiritual guidance, decision-making and career choices.
• include aiding one in coping with a crisis, premarital and marital counseling.

Professionals and Practitioners of Counseling

• include: guidance counselors, human resource development specialists, career counselors, marriage counselors, psychiatrists, child counselors, adult counselors, geriatric counselors, and clinical psychologists.
• school counselors assist students in overcoming academic challenges.
• career counselors assist clients in initiating professional lives, adapting to workplace changes, and achieving success.
• child abuse counselors assist victims in rebuilding their mental health.
• depression counselors can assist people who were facing mental, emotional and physical effects of depression.

The Clients of and Processes in Counseling

• Provides support to individuals of all ages, including students, children, adults, and adolescents, in dealing with the challenges of daily life.
• Provides multiple sources of support

Types of Clients

• Voluntary Clients:
  • Those who voluntarily seek assistance.
• Involuntary Clients:
  • Those in need who may not consider asking for help or are unaware of available assistance.

Characteristics and Needs of Specific Clienteles

• Students:
  • Career options, stress management, decision making, and adjusting to cultural/socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Family:
  • Conflict resolution, skills for couples and children.
• Drugs and Alcohol Dependents:
  • Overcoming addiction, managing mental health effects.
• Abused Children:
  • Facilitating processing and restoration in the recovery procedure.
• Community:
  • Help restore trust and confidence after civil war with mass killings.

Approaches to Psychotherapy

Psychodynamic therapies

• Focus is on discovering unconscious motivations and meanings to change problematic thoughts, behaviors, and feelings.

Psychoanalysis

• Close working with a patient by exploring there interactions in a therapeutic relationship.

Behavior therapy

• Focuses on learning's role in developing both normal and abnormal behaviors.
  • Classical Conditioning:
    • a "Desensitizing" classical conditioning in action: when A therapist will help a client with phobia through repeated exposure to whatever causes anxiety.
      • Arachnophobia: an intense fear of spiders and other arachnids
      • Ophidiophobia: an intense fear of snakes
      • Acrophobia: an intense fear of heights
      • Aerophobia: an intense fear of flying
      • Cynophobia: an intense fear of dogs
      • Astraphobia: an intense fear of thunder and lightning
      • Trypanophobia: an intense fear of injections
      • Social phobia: an intense fear of social interactions
      • Agoraphobia: an intense fear of places that are difficult to escape,
      • sometimes involving a fear of crowded or open spaces
      • Mysophobia: an intense fear of germs, dirt, and other contaminants
      • Claustrophobia: fear of closed spaces
      • Dentophobia: fear of going to the dentist
      • Enochlophobia: fear of crowds
      • Glossophobia: fear of public speaking
      • Hemophobia: fear of blood
      • latrophobia: fear of doctors
      • Coulrophobia: fear of clowns
      • Gynophobia: fear of women
      • Cynophobia: fear of dogs
      • Ailurophobia: fear of cats
  • Operant Conditioning
    • relies on rewards and punishments to shape people's behavior
  • Cognitive therapy emphasize what people think rather than what they do.
    • cognitive therapists believe that it's dysfunctional thinking that leads to dysfunctional emotions or behaviors.

Humanistic therapy

• Emphasises people's capacity to make rational choices and develop and are also important themes.
  • Client-centered therapy rejects the idea of therapists as authorities on their clients' inner experiences.
  • Gestalt therapy emphasizes the importance of being aware of the here and now and accepting responsibility for yourself.
  • Existential therapy focuses on free will, self-determination and the search for meaning.

Integrative or holistic therapy

• many therapists blend elements from different approaches and tailor their treatment according to each client's needs.