A New Emerging Role for School Counselors: Communication Activity Therapy (CAT) for Families

School counselors are usually the first ones to encounter students who are having problems. From interviews with students and parents in crisis, communication between them is the primary concern. This paper describes Communication Anxiety Therapy (CAT), a process used to help develop communication within families. It states that CAT is filled with process strategies that encourage, engage, and empower students and families to positively deal with the stress in their lives. Each CAT session is designed to take its team members through a series of developmental learning phases. The sessions involve warm-up activities to help set the tone of the group, problem-solving activities, followed by assessing individual roles and group responses. The paper explains that it is participatory communication led by professional school counselors in their emerging role of providing counseling to the family unit. (JDM)