Bangladesh

Counselling services in Bangladesh started to gain recognition in the late 20th century through human rights organizations that were delivering services to disfranchised women and children (Islam, 2012). This was the first time where people started to become more aware of the importance and need of counselling services in the country. At that time, the main focus of counselling services provided by international and national organizations was ranging from identification to recovery and integration of the survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse, exploitation, and trafficking (Islam, 2012). The need for counselling interventions also came from repeated natural and man made hazards affecting the Bangladesh population then. At the beginning, unskilled personnel with little or no training were allowed to provide services, until 1996 when the first counselling service was established at the Student Counselling and Guidance center of the University of Dhaka (Islam, 2012). In 2006, the initiation of professional courses in Educational Psychology became the opening for psychological services to be further extended to various schools and child development clinics (Islam, 2012). Counsellors started to be recruited by medical institutions, private schools, as well as NGOs. At the time, no formal training facilities were available for counsellors, thus they were provided with short-term training to build capacity and resources to work at field level. Up until 2012, Educational and Counselling Psychology was running as a distinct profession in psychology.