[Counseling in industries: its current practices and its future]

Counseling in industries, along with mental health in industries is becoming a major concern among industrial nations in recent years. However, large scale studies on this subject has been few and limited in scope, due partly to the fact that no governmental regulation or accreditation for counseling in industries or for counselors exist. Nevertheless, some enterprises have initiated counseling services. To investigate the actualities of counseling in industries, the authors send questionnaires to 1385 enterprises with an employment of over 500. 52.8% of the questionnaires were collected. Among them 25.8% replied that they already had counseling services. The questionnaire asked counselors at these enterprises about the system of counseling, counselors' duties, counselors' techniques, counselors' training, counselors' educational background and about clients. Since the practice of counseling is determined, to an extent, by the background of the counselors, the authors separated counselors into four groups: medical counselors who graduated from medical schools; psychological counselors who graduated from colleges or graduate schools with a major in psychology; nurse counselors who graduated from schools of nursing; and lay counselors who did not meet the criteria for the above three groups. The results showed that the four groups tend to respond differently to the questionnaire. Based on these results, the authors discussed four different types of counseling in industries. It is hoped that this study, along with future studies, will pave the way for the establishment of coherent systems of counseling in industries, as well as for the accreditation of several types of counselors.