Day 26

Finally finished up the very first complete draft of the analysis! All that is left is for me to edit it a bit more and then send it in again, particularly as my supervisor is going on leave and will not be able to access any additional work I do on the analysis until Monday itself. This means I need to work fast to get the work done. And with the literature review on the back of my mind, I anticipate that I will probably need to stay back a bit later to get more work done (in the coming weeks).

I am beginning to understand now why it is so easy to OT in such jobs, because the work is almost endless and you are handling mutliple projects and meetings at a time. So not only is time management important, but sometimes it is simply not possible to get everything done on time within the 8-9 hours you work a day. Bearing in mind that I am only doing a small part of what everyone else here is doing, I think it is quite amazing that people manage to go home on time, or that they do not become overly stressed about the work here.

I continued doing research (or trying to) to find articles for the literature review. It is truly getting frustrating that I am unable to find articles regarding the elderly and counselling. It makes me wonder how there could be such a serious gap in research literature. As I look at the content and abstracts of the various articles I come across during my article search, I find many of them sound interesting - but many are also too niche, as if they are attempting to look into one particular aspect in a bit to make a name for themselves by taking on such a different area in research. While I do think that niche areas need to be researched, it appears that everyone is so busy trying to find these interesting niche areas that something as "common place" as evaluating the effectiveness of counselling for the elderly becomes neglected and actually becomes obscure (or at least not common place).

And then I find that there are several topics that seem to be over-researched, that I keep seeing as I try to find articles on counselling - things such as counselling elderly with HIV, or with alcohol problems, or even drug use. Which makes me wonder then - are the elderly not the only ones who think that counselling should be left for those with "serious issues"? Are even researchers (and perhaps even practitioners themselves) holding onto the mindset that if you are "okay" or without mental or physical health problems that you do not need counselling? If that is the case, then we might need to not only educate the elderly and the public about the uses for counselling, but even remind researchers and practitioners that counselling can be for everyone, no matter how big or small your problems are, as long as you are in need of a listening ear or a fresh perspective on a problem, or even if you want to improve your interpersonal relationship skills.