dream work with children

1)Dream work with children: Perceptions and practices of school mental health professionals.

Source:
Dreaming, Vol 19(2), Jun, 2009. pp. 85-96.

Authors:
Huermann, Rosalia, Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, US
Crook Lyon, Rachel E., Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, US, rachel
Heath, Melissa Allen, Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, US
Fischer, Lane, Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, US
Potkar, Kirti, Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, US

2)The purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions of and experiences with dream work, based on feedback from a small group of school-based mental health professionals. Specifically, we were interested in practitioners’ frequency of working with students’ dreams; client situations perceived as best suited for dream work; types of counseling activities involving dream work; attributes of professionals most likely to work with dreams; and reasons professionals may be hesitant to work with dreams.

3) Subjects/Participants:
Public school students.School mental health professionals. A total of 49 school mental health practitioners from three Utah public school districts participated in this research (29 female, 20 male). The age of the participants ranged from 23 to 64 years. Participants’ years of work experience varied, with some participants having worked as little as 1 year and others for as many as 49 years. The majority of participants were school psychologists, school counselors and school social workers.

(The did a survey on basic demographic questions such as gender, age, education, profession, and years on the job. Practitioners were asked to estimate the percentage of time spent counseling in school settings and to indicate their level of training on an anchored rating scale. Participants were also asked to respond to an open-ended question about their thoughts in working with dreams presented in counseling. The survey was also designed to determine how practitioners have used dreams when counseling children.)

4) The results from this study suggest that attitudes toward dreams and perceived importance of dream work were related to practitioners’ willingness to work with dreams in counseling. (Similarly, Crook and Hill (2003) found that therapists with more positive attitudes toward dreams were more likely to engage in all types of dream activities.) One may speculate that school mental health professionals who find value in exploring their own dreams may have greater confidence in dream work benefiting students. (A major finding of this study is that over half of the school mental health practitioners in this sample reported having had at least one student bring a dream into counseling and that practitioners spent some time in counseling sessions working with students’ dreams. When students brought dreams into counseling, school mental health practitioners typically listened to the dream but did not engage in other dream activities. Given the minimal amount of reported training, it seems as though participating practitioners may have lacked both the knowledge and the confidence to work effectively with children’s dreams.) .

5) In my opinion this research was a good way to find out about children dreams. Implications for Future Research and Training
Although this study was conducted with a small population and the response rate was low, it indicates that dream work is practiced by some mental health professionals in public school settings. Additional research is needed to investigate how dream work is being used in public schools and to establish a solid baseline from which to initiate further research. In addition, the efficacy of dream work used in public school settings should be examined taking into account the perspectives of both the practitioner and the student.
In this study, practitioners’ indications that they did not use dream work when counseling with public school students seemed to be correlated with lack of training. Considering that most practitioners in the sample reported having at least one student bring a dream into counseling, it would seem appropriate to include dream work in training programs, thus expanding practitioners’ abilities to counsel and help students. Indeed, Clark (1999) argued that, due to lack of training, many counselors may avoid exploring children’s dreams and thus fail to acknowledge a phenomenon that is of extreme interest to a child, even while focused on collecting essential information about that child. Consequently, future research should be conducted regarding the training of school mental health practitioners in dream work. For example, studies might ask: If practitioners received more training in the use of dream work, would they be more inclined to use it if the opportunity arose? How would they rate or perceive this counseling method? How would training programs perceive this addition? How much emphasis would they place on this method?