FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Resource Offers Students and Practitioners a Unique Tool for Training and Professional Development

ALEXANDRIA, VA—Counseling and Therapy in Video is the latest release from electronic publisher Alexander Street and the first resource to make hundreds of hours of counseling and therapy videos accessible online. Available to libraries and mental health organizations via subscription or outright purchase, Counseling and Therapy in Video gives students and practitioners of the helping professions access to a wide range of training and continuing education content.

At launch, Counseling and Therapy in Video includes more than 275 videos totaling more than 300 hours of footage; it will grow to more than 320 videos totaling more than 400 hours. The collection is built on three kinds of video programming: demonstrations and therapy sessions (actual, re-enacted, and scripted) conducted by leading psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers; consultations led by experts who outline therapeutic approaches and analyze illustrative examples of counseling footage; and lectures, presentations, and interviews in which well-known therapists discuss their work and issues affecting the mental health field. The collection also incorporates more than 50 downloadable teaching and discussion guides for use in the classroom, and this number is expected to grow to more than 150. Continuing education (C.E.) credits are available for many of the videos in the collection.

Says Alexander Street editor Greg Urquhart, “The project fills a gap in counseling instruction for social work, education, psychology, religious studies, nursing, and medicine. Books and journal articles do a good job of relating theory, but there are few ways to prepare effectively for the actual counseling encounter. Video goes much further, conveying the intricacies and nuance of behavior, tone, facial expression, and body language, helping students distinguish between the successful and unsuccessful therapy interaction. Now for the first time, instructors and students will have these videos online, searchable together, with practical teaching tools.”

Teaching tools are central to the collection. Alexander Street’s Semantic Indexing™, extensive controlled vocabularies, and browse and search functionality let you identify video content by therapeutic approach, diagnostic criteria, subjects, themes, and 17 other search fields. Synchronized, scrolling transcripts accompany every video. The transcripts are cross-searchable so you can jump around easily within the video. Visual timelines let you scan hours of video content in seconds, using thumbnail images. Instructors can use custom clip-making tools to create playlists and annotate the segments for in-class or assigned watching and then deliver that content directly to a Web site or course management system using an embeddable video player. All necessary permissions for educational use (including in-class demonstration and remote viewing access) are covered by the terms of the license, so that libraries don’t have to monitor, request, and track those details.

Published through partnerships with Microtraining Associates, Psychotherapy.net, the University of Manchester Department of Psychiatry, and others, Counseling and Therapy in Video contains works produced by a wide range of individuals and organizations, including Allyn & Bacon, The American Psychological Association, Columbia University Teachers’ College, The Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, The University of Florida Counseling Center, and Indiana University. Well-known therapists featured in the collection include Allen Ivey, Jon Carlson, Arnold Lazarus, Irvin Yalom, and Derald Wing Sue.

Most subjects are covered in multiple videos, so you can see how different therapeutic methods are used to treat the same problem, or how two different practitioners apply the same therapeutic method. A wide variety of clients, therapists, and approaches are covered, so the collection is extremely diverse, covering individual, couple, family, and group therapies and therapies focused on children, adolescents, and the elderly. The collection also lets you search by the gender, sexual preference, and ethnic group of the therapist and client.

Additional information about Counseling and Therapy in Video is available on the Alexander Street Press Web site at http://alexanderstreet.com/products/ctiv.htm

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About Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press is an electronic publisher of award-winning online collections in the humanities and social sciences. Since its beginnings in 2000, Alexander Street has delivered uniquely powerful search capabilities powered by Alexander Street’s Semantic Indexing™ and content not available anywhere else. Alexander Street collections are available to library and educational institutions via annual subscription or outright purchase of perpetual rights.

The first electronic publisher to focus specifically on the creation of editorially crafted, cross-searchable video collections with practical applications for teaching and scholarship, Alexander Street has released four other video collections to-date in its series of Critical Video Editions, including American History in Video, Theatre in Video, Dance in Video, and Opera in Video. To learn more, visit http://criticalvideoeditions.com

Trial and Reviewer Access
Free trial access is available to libraries and educational institutions. To request trial access and pricing information, email sales@alexanderstreet.com

Reviewers, media contacts, libraries, and university faculty may request access to Counseling and Therapy in Video by emailing Meg Keller at mkeller@alexanderstreet.com