Dreamwork with Children: Perceptions and Practice of School-Based Mental Health Professionals

Forty nine public school mental health practitioners (i.e., school counselors, school psychologists, and school social workers) completed a survey about working with dreams when counseling students. Most practitioners in this sample reported having at least one student bring up dreams during counseling and spent some time in counseling working with students' dreams. Practitioners addressed dreams more frequently in situations where the student was having troubling dreams or nightmares, and/or was dealing with death and grief. They also acknowledged working with dreams with students who were diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, were emotionally disturbed, suffered from recurrent dreams, were depressed, and had learning disabilities. This study shows that practitioners were less likely to talk about dreams with students who had adjustment disorders, psychosis, were oppositional or ill, struggled with substance abuse problems, or had eating disorders. Furthermore, most practitioners indicated receiving no training and did not feel competent to work with children's dreams. However, most surveyed practitioners were interested in learning more about dreams in general.

Name thesis:degree_name

EdS

Grantor dc:publisher

Brigham Young University - Provo

Author dc:creator

• Huermann, Rosalia Rodriguez

• dreams
• counseling
• children
• school psychology
• public schools
• Counseling Psychology
• Special Education and Teaching

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1237

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-2236