Career development and mental health

Conclusion While the extent of linkages and the patterning of the relationships between career development and mental health is yet to be fully studied and articulated, this paper has argued that such connections do exist. Given such a premise, it has been contended that career counseling does serve as a therapeutic modality as it provides dislocated, unhappy, maladjusted or underemployed workers information, support, encouragement, and skills that increase personal competence, facilitate hope, and reduce feelings of being a social isolate of little worth or dignity. Skill building or psychoeducational approaches can deal directly with such matters as anger management, assertiveness, planfulness, interpersonal competence, openness to constructive supervision. These are matters of educating people for choice, for purpose, and for development, approaches which help people to create reality and make meaning for themselves within the context of work and career. As such they are therapeutic ways of engendering mental health.