A model of goal striving and mental health for coaching populations

therapy and that coaching does not aim to treat psychological problems, mental illness or other issues of pathology. Rather, coaching clients are looking for ways to better attain their goals, improve their performance and enhance their quality of life (see, for example, Whitworth et al., 1998). Are these mantras in fact true? If not, how can we integrate issues related to mental health and goal striving within a coaching-related model? As the practice of coaching develops and as research into coaching advances, our understanding of the parameters of the coaching industry and demographics of coaching clients has become more sophisticated. As this knowledge has developed, it has become increasingly clear that there is a discrepancy between espoused ideas about what coaching ‘should’ be and the reality of what happens in real-life coaching practice. In reality, the boundaries between coaching practice and therapeutic practice are somewhat blurred. That there has been little theoretical or empirical research exploring the boundaries between coaching and therapy is a serious shortcoming in the coaching literature. Clearly, the coaching industry and coaching psychology would benefit from coachingrelated models that delineate issues of goal striving, mental health/mental illness and psychopathology. In this paper past approaches to distinguishing coaching from therapy are discussed. The key foci of coaching; goal striving, well-being enhancement and goal attainment, are distinguished from the foci of therapeutic interventions which are identified as the treatment of psycho-