Client Psychological Distress: An Important Factor in Career Counseling

Abstract

The authors explored client psychological distress as a variable in career counseling. Forty‐two clients in a naturalistic setting were seen for a total of 290 sessions by 21 counselors‐in‐training. The results indicated that (a) 60% of the clients were psychologically distressed, (b) clients' scores decreased significantly from pretest to posttest on psychological distress variables, (c) significant linear growth occurred in the clients' perception of the working alliance across sessions, and (d) the psychological distress outcome variables were significantly related to both the first session level of the working alliance and its linear growth.