The context of contribution: publishing practice articles in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling.

THE COSMOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF CONTRIBUTION: THE REALLY BIG PICTURE

We are born, we live and we die. Everything is born, lives and dies: from a quark to a grain of sand, to an ocean, to a human being, to a thought, to a star, to a galaxy ... to the universe itself. We are an instant between two eternities, an incredibly complex and transient "pinch" of space and time in the incomprehensible ocean of energy which we call the universe. Countless contributing factors and energies have emerged and interacted to create us here and now. Reese (1998) states:

   Our universe and the laws governing it, had to be (in a well-defined
   sense) rather special to allow our emergence. Stars had to form;
   the nuclear furnaces that keep them shining had to transmute
   pristine hydrogen into carbon, oxygen, and iron atoms; a stable
   environment and vast spans of space-time were prerequisites for the
   complexities of life on earth (p. 33).

Through this improbable miracle, we have, as individuals, been born into this instant between two eternities that is our life. In addition of course, almost every aspect of the lives that we now live have been sculpted and influenced on multiple levels by the billions of contributions which have been made through previous generations of our fellow human beings.

Indeed, at many points in our own individual developing lives, we have the privilege of contributing to each other in multifarious fashions and through an astounding number of roles and contexts. In our role as counseling professionals, we additionally have the enviable privilege of potentially contributing to others in our chosen field through our published research and compelling written work related to clinical practice. These written contributions, if well crafted, valid and significant to our colleagues, have the potential to echo and ripple beyond the individual reader's sphere of influence. For example, mental health counseling practitioners may use our contributions to directly influence their work with the people they serve in their day-to-day counseling practice. Future contributions may eventually be proffered by those colleagues who have found our ideas and the implications of those ideas of interest and thought provoking. In fact, contributions to JMHC may serve as the essential "butterfly effect" as conjectured in chaos theory (Gleick, 1987) to change a life or spark the evolution of change in an entire system of care. Thus, the power of contribution is potentially cascading and contagious.

This idea of the contextual and far reaching potential of practice contributions to JMHC is reality as I know it, and it will invariably serve as a guiding "vision" for me and my work with the journal. Accordingly, I strongly encourage practice-related contributions to JMHC as a way to actualize ones own professional "instant between two eternities" and perhaps the "instant" of others as well. Many people may benefit through these efforts, now and in the future.

THE PERSONAL CONTEXT OF CONTRIBUTION

It is within the above context that I am absolutely delighted and grateful to have the opportunity to contribute in some small way to the field of mental health counseling through my work as associate editor for practice for the JMHC. In an effort to help the JMHC readership further understand my frame of reference as the associate editor for practice, and as a means to inform potential authors interested in manuscript submission, I trust that a very brief sketch of my background will be useful. Thus, I encourage authors to consider the following in conjunction with other JMHC guidance offered by my colleagues in this journal, as "informed consent" for submission.

I have been privileged for more than 33 years to have worked in community mental health/alcohol and drug addiction services in a spectrum of capacities. My work has ranged from clinical direct care (e.g., case manager, partial hospitalization therapist, psychometrician, outpatient, and private practice therapist) to supervision and administration (e.g., case management and outpatient supervisors, clinical director and executive director). Serving through the years as adjunct faculty at the University of Akron and Notre Dame College (in concert with my love of science), has kept me connected and committed to the realm of evolving research and evidence-based practice. Most recently, I have had the great opportunity of helping develop mental health/alcohol and drug addiction public policy and engaging in strategic planning on a state-wide basis while serving as president for the Ohio Council of Behavioral Healthcare Providers, and through appointments to Ohio's Strategic Planning Committee. These experiences have sculpted and expanded my perspective of mental health counseling, will continue to inform me throughout my tenure as associate editor for practice, and will significantly guide my editorial and manuscript review recommendations. It is through these experiences that I have developed an appreciation of the importance of context that I will bring to my editorial work.

THE CLINICAL DIRECT CARE, SUPERVISION AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONTEXT

Like many mental health counselors, I began my clinical career because of my passion for the field, my genuine desire to be helpful to people, an appreciation for individual phenomenological experience and a concomitant personal assessment that I may have something to offer. It is evident to me through these experiences, that mental health counselors not only work in clinical roles, but also as teachers, supervisors, administrators, and policy makers, sometimes wearing many of these "hats" simultaneously. Across all of these roles, mental health counselors support and enhance direct care through creating and embracing an accountable, nurturing, and learning human/professional culture which is developmental and recovery oriented and inherently respectful of individual variations and diversity.

Because counselors work in such a broad spectrum of roles in the "real world," I invite manuscripts which relate to this full diversity of professional involvement. Qualitative and quantitative research, germane literature reviews and synthesis, and insightful conceptual contributions should be submitted, therefore, with due consideration and discussion of "real world" issues for mental health counselors and clear implications for practical and useful applications. It is my goal that, after reading articles published in JMHC, mental health counselors should, to the extent possible, walk away from their reading with new tools to use in their day-to-day efforts. These tools might include positively transformed concepts or new ideas to readily integrate into their counseling, supervision, teaching or administrative schemas. Mental health counselors should have a sense that it was well worth their increasingly precious time to have read the contributions. I, therefore, especially invite manuscripts reflective of evolving mental health counseling roles, the implementation of evidence based and best practices, and subsequent "real world" useful results. In addition, work that addresses, researches and codifies salient mental health development and recovery issues from the mental health counselor's, as well as the consumer's frame of reference are welcomed, if that work serves to advance the field.

As many are aware, the President's New Freedom Commission Report on Mental Health (2003) was released to the public two years ago. This report detailed the need to transform our nation's mental health system. It, as well, delineated six goals for improving mental health services and support for people with mental illness. This report is only one example of an evolving public policy which will clearly have impact on mental health counselors and the systems in which they work, as it is unpacked in each state and its goals are considered and actualized. Consequently, questions and issues raised by this and other such public policies deserve attention, exploration, research, and the scrutiny of empirical evidence for validation, as well as objective "real world" discussion and analysis of potential for practical utility. I also invite manuscripts that deal with such complex issues and consequently, help the JMHC readership make valid, informed decisions vis a vis their work and related policy vectors. Policy and the work that mental health counselors do are often implicitly and inextricably intertwined.

Finally, I would like to direct potential authors to our current editor's previous editorial comments and guidelines when he assumed his position as associate editor for research for this journal three years ago. I fully endorse and support the three primary positions that Rogers (2002) offered to guide manuscript preparations for contribution, as detailed in his JMHC editorial, Looking Back and Moving Forward: Research in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling. In this editorial, he emphasized the importance of remaining committed to a broad definition of research, the continued need for a strong presence of solid research in the journal, and a commitment that the JMHC will continue to serve a strong professional development mission.

In closing, I would like to reinforce the importance of considering the multiple contextual issues that confront mental health counselors, and especially the direct context of practice, when submitting practice-related manuscripts to the journal. In that context, I look forward to practice-related contributions to share with the JMHC readership and welcome feedback and thoughts concerning the practice section of the JMHC!

REFERENCES

Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Viking.

New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. (2003). Achieving the promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America. Final Report. DHHS Pub. No. SMA-03-3832. Rockville, MD: Author.

Rees, M. (1997). Before the Beginning. United Kingdom: Simon & Schuster.

Rogers, J.R. (2002). Looking back and moving forward: Research in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 24, 195-198.

Bernard S. Jesiolowski, Ph.D., is with the Crisis Intervention Center, Canton, OH. E-mail: [e-mail].