The effectiveness of counselling: COSCA’s review and commentary

The use of counselling as a way of responding to people in distress has grown rapidly in recent years. While it has proven popular with many people, the rapid growth of counselling has also generated some disquiet and numerous questions. Confusion abounds in many quarters about what counselling is and to what extent it works. The position is complicated by the fact that there is considerable debate about how the effects of counselling should be measured. Nevertheless, robust and consistent evidence about the effectiveness of counselling is now accumulating. This paper provides a brief introduction to debates about effectiveness before summarising the results of some of the most influential bodies of research. It also identifies important limitations of existing findings.