Some bare bones basics


Michael Stuart Kelly

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I just read a very good series of 6 consecutive posts on RoR by a guy named Steve Wolfer. He gives some bare bones information and some really basic common sense advice.

Posts 250-255

Here is the information on licensing from one of the posts:

--- Licensing in the mental health/counseling field ---

There are a variety of licenses. All of them, of course, are from a government agencies and subject to the usual irrational bureaucratic nonsense. There are four levels of license determined by the underlying level of education:

Counseling licenses – Bachelors degree or no degree at all (varies by state). These people often have the toughest clients to work with. For example they are most often the ones in charge of groups of drug users or legal offenders.

(Of course another really tough population are those that come in off the street with no money - a real hodge-podge of disorders and they are most often seen by unlicensed interns still working on getting their degrees.)

Masters level licenses – Some are called Licensed Professional Counselors, others are marriage and family therapists, or licensed social workers and a variety of other licenses that are used for counseling or psychotherapy. In California this is about 1 ½ to 2 years for the masters and then 3000 hours of supervised internship before sitting for the license exams (which most candidates spend about 6 months prep work).

Doctoral level licenses – these are primarily driven by the APA (American Psychological Association – a powerful lobbying group whose members are licensed psychologists. Its not unlike a guild. They do some good work in suggesting standards and promoting the use of research to verify therapeutic effectiveness of different theories. Their standards have been accepted by all the states and determine requirements for licensed psychologists.

M.D. degree – anyone with a medical degree can call them selves a psychiatrist. But most of them do get specialized training and even board certification – Even so, the bulk of their education has been the same as other medical doctors.

All of the posts are equally impressive in conciseness and objectivity. At least, I'm impressed.

Michael

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Michael,

Wolfer's posts are excellent. I get asked about counseling and clinical psychology all the time by students who will be finishing their degrees and are thinking about going to grad school. I wish I could be as concise as Wolfer succeeds in being.

Robert Campbell

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  • 3 months later...

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