Blog 9

I started to read chapter 6 and found the list of clients with special needs (Brown, 2012).  I read the list and saw that women were second on the list of choices.  I thought to myself that it is ridiculous that they are even on that list.  When I think of someone with special needs, I think of someone who is physically or mentally not able to help themselves in certain aspects of their lives.  Just because someone is a women does not make them a person with special needs.  They are human just like the men are.  They have different feature then men but that does not make them people with special needs.  Yes, in the past women were suppose to stay home and help with the kids, but today, women are doing fantastic in their chosen careers.  They should not be considered as a client with special needs.  What troubles me about this is the fact that Brown’s (2012) textbook was recently edited.  What should have happened was the author should have taken women out of the list of clients with special needs because I feel that in today’s society it is not needed anymore.

            When I continued to read on, I saw that people with mental illness is the second largest group of clients with disabilities (Brown 2012).  Currently, I am taking SPED 600, which is orientation to special education, and I did not know about this fact.  I might have missed it in my studies, but I feel that this category is a really high number.  Brown (2012) also described that this group’s unemployment rate is around 85 percent.  To me that number is extremely high but it is hard for this group to find good jobs because of their mental illness.  I feel employers are scared to hire them because they might take off too many days or they might not be able to perform the task that is brought to them.  It is like job’s satisfactoriness does not match up with the skills of individuals with mental illness and that is why employers do not hire them.  It is like this group is stuck between a rock and a hard place and cannot get out of the hole that they are in.  People with special needs have a hard time getting a decent job.  They can try really hard but sometimes their disabilities get in the way.  All career counselors can do for them is to “consider how these clients’ personal lives and careers interact” (Brown, 2012, p 122).

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10^th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.