National Dong Hwa University

Department of Counseling & Clinical Psychology

The Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology was created in August 2009 as a merger from the original Department of Clinical and Counseling Psychology on Shoufeng campus and the Department of Counseling Psychology on Meilun campus, formerly National Hualien University of Education. The curriculum structure of the new department evolves around three pathways for the training of relevant personnel in helping-related professions: basic research in psychology, clinical psychology, and counseling psychology.

A unique feature of our department is the overlapping of professional developments in counseling psychology and clinical psychology: we combine these two domains in the training of our students. The other important features of our department include:

(1) exploring relevant issues of research in counseling and clinical psychology,
(2) emphasizing counseling strategies and clinical skills in the treatment of special problems for minority groups,
(3) developing the counseling and clinical psychology disciplines in both theory and practice,
(4) conducting instructional research using psycho-physical equipment in combination with medical instrument, and
(5) emphasizing the science-practitioner orientation in teaching and research.

Our emphases of future development are:

(1) Instructional research on mental, psychological and spiritual processes with local culture perspectives,
(2) Integrating multi-disciplinary research with disadvantaged ethnic groups research,
(3) Developing research on fundamental processes of objective structural assessment of competence and cognitive neurosciences.

The basic research in psychology pathway instills scientific training and prepares students for future work in psychology-related careers. The clinical psychology pathway combines both western and eastern domains of learning with emphasis in theory, practice, services and research. The counseling psychology pathway prepares students for professional certification in counseling work with emphasis in personal development and crisis prevention. We seek to integrate the services provided by school, community, and hospital.

About NDHU