Types of counseling certifications: You may like to become a counselor and don’t know where to start from, or don’t even have any idea the types of counseling certifications or programs that are available for you to enroll to pursue your career. Don’t worry; I have gathered some professions that are related to counseling certifications for you to explore at your convenience time.
Types Of Counseling Certifications: The Guide to Selecting Counseling Certifications
While preparing to become a therapist, you need to make research to know the profession that best describes your interest and then embark on the journey to achieving your would-be dream. Over the years, positive developments have entered the field of mental health issues, therefore, it is necessary to train more professionals into the field in order to prevent the widespread of mental illness, emotional and psychological disorder. For this reason, if you are already determined to become part of the helping hands to prevent people from suffering from this psychological traumas, this article is meant for you to select below, the programs that fit your interest.
Clinical Social Worker
This is a professional course or practice which deals with the social work of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment, prevention of mental illness, emotional disorders, and behavioral instability. Before you can practice as a professional social worker, you must have been licensed in your state of practice to carry out your newly acquired knowledge of mental health issues, and before this can happen, you must have undergone some series of hours of supervisions and internship along a senior professional supervisor who throughout the process of your field practice and internship approved of your success in every encounter you made with your patients.
You can practice your profession as clinical social work in various institutions such as schools, hospitals, primary health care, community mental health centers, and agencies. As a would-be clinical social worker, you must have completed your bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, internship and postgraduate supervisions for hours and then pass a licensure exam.
Mental Health Counseling
This course is a distinct profession which requires national standards for education, training and clinical practice. Since the Mental Health Counselors are highly skilled people, they never find it difficult to provide the best service for their clients. In this profession, both traditional psychotherapy and practical are combined as an approach to solving the problems of their patients in an effective way.
The various services rendered by a clinical mental health worker are listed below for you to see:
- Managing crisis
- Planning of treatment and utility review
- Short and solution focused therapy
- Treatment of drug abuse
- Psychoeducational and prevention programs
- Psychotherapy
- Patients’ assessment and diagnosis.
All mental health students must apply for internship, practicum experiences for the chance to get licensure as a means to begin initial stages for performing therapy on individuals or group. Their training involves focusing on the need for individual and group and in wellness and prevention is an outstanding reason why they have been able to integrate health care. After the whole program, a clinical mental health practitioner will be able to counsel individual, families, couples, adolescents, and children.
The requirements to finally earn licensure in clinical mental health care are that the applicant must have earned a masters degree in counseling or a related mental health course in a higher institution. He or she must have completed two years of post-masters clinical work under the supervision of an experienced and licensed mental health professional. Lastly, he or she must have passed the licensure exam to obtain it.
Clinical Psychologist
Another aspect of the counseling program in Clinical Psychology. A clinical Psychologist must have obtained a doctorate degree but cannot prescribe medication because they are not trained to do that. They are involved majorly on mental health issues that involve emotion, mental illness, and behavioral disorders.
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a medical doctor that has received advanced training in psychiatric issues.
They are trained to prescribe psychotropic medication that is, they focus on medical management. The individual or group patient(s) are always visited by the psychiatrists on a monthly basis and may not necessarily offer a counseling service. However, they work with counselors to take note of the patient’s progress and coordination during treatment. Being a medication manager, a psychiatrist can also do some therapeutic talks or provide traditional mental health treatment.
Marriage and Family Therapist
This focuses on relationship, marital and family issues that are related to mental health. The therapist works with couples, parents, siblings to treat their mental health problems. Most of the issues they solve are family dynamism, interpersonal issues, and related matters. You will actually acquire a master’s level education to be trained as a marriage and family therapist, supervisions under some hours, internship and a clinical exam to obtain licensure. The profession trains you to believe that most of the mental health issues have to do with the settings of the family and social environments. They approach mental and emotional issues within the family with their professional experience to ensure that the client, either individual or group received standard treatment of their mental health issues. Another goal a marriage and family therapist focuses on is to ensure that he balances the family mental and emotional struggles, to change the problem or the repetitive actions that cause a problem in the marriage.
Contemporary Theory in Addictive Behavior
This certification provides you an in-depth understanding of addiction, especially substance abuse, abnormal behavior far different from what is expected of an upright person. You must have completed your master’s degree, internship, and supervision work under some hours to achieve your licensure to practice your career course.
National Certified Counselor
You must have met the standard of high education, experience, supervision, examinations and must have acquired the state or national licensure to be able to demonstrate your counsellorship knowledge. As a student of nationally certified counseling, you can use the NCC credentials or marketing purposes as a means to secure discounted liability insurance and to benefit from national advocacy effort controlled by the nationally certified counselors.
Rehabilitation Counseling
This has to do with a specific practice of counseling within the career in which a professional counselor is trained to help people with emotional and physical disability live life independently. A rehabilitation specialist may help their patients arrange medical care, provide useful training, assist in job placement, evaluate medical reports, and help the patient either individual or group develop skills for their job so that they can work and be independent. The counselor plays his role based on the condition of the patient he or she is working with. However, the purpose of counseling within this course is to provide guidance and support to those who are emotionally and physically disabled.
A rehabilitation counselor can work in government settings as an agent or in the community agencies, they can also work with spouses and family as help in curbing the marital and family problems. You must have a bachelor degree in a psychology-related course; you must be a master’s degree holder and then must have been granted a license to practice before you can be called a rehabilitation counselor.
Education Counselor
This is also known as counselor education, it specializes at grooming students to apply professionally, the knowledge of theory and principle of guidance and counseling for the development of an individual or group of people personally, socially, educationally, and vocationally. It can also be referred to as a tool used in the preparation of future professional counselors or therapists who will teach the curriculum of counseling theory and practice. You must complete an accredited graduate program with reasonable hours of documented supervision of clinical fieldwork, and then acquire your state licensure.
Types Of Counseling Certifications: How to Become a Certified Counselor
Now that I have mentioned some of the counseling certifications above, there is a need to know how to obtain them. The coming outlines will talk in details on how to become a certified counselor generally in all the counsellorship certifications as mentioned earlier. Follow the steps below to obtain licensure in your counsellorship career.
Step 1: You will have to earn an undergraduate degree
Most of the professional courses in counseling demand that you should have completed a bachelor’s degree. Most of the time, you need a 3.0 GPA as an average grade in any of the counseling programs. But the fact is that most of the master’s degree programs accept an applicant with at least some educational background in psychology. This means you should choose an undergraduate course that is in a relationship with psychology.
Step 2: Pursue a Masters Degree
In some states, a minimum of a masters degree is sufficient to become a professional and licensed counselor in any of the choice you chose in the course of study. The core programs in masters degree level counseling focus on individual and group, therefore, their the students explore counseling theories and practice that will train them to effectively solve their client psychological issues. It does not end there, masters students are also trained to look into counseling that explores cultural diversity and counseling, family and ethics counseling. They may equally decide to choose a specialty such as school counseling, marriage, and family therapy.
Step 3: Obtain a Licensure to Practice
It is required that you must pass a licensure exam after the completion of your master’s degree. You must have competed for an internship and undergo some hours of supervised fieldwork at the approval of a certified and experienced senior counselor.
Step 4: Get Certified in Counseling
There is a credential that NBCC voluntary National Certified Counselor (NCC) offers. This is another important achievement that can give professional counselors accountability and superior credibility within the community and among colleagues. Now that you have obtained your master’s degree, a student must undergo 3, 000 hours of postgraduate experience of counseling and at least all being supervised for 100 hours. Apart from this requirement, an applicant needs to sit for the National Counselor Exam (NCE) to earn the certification. Sometimes, there is a chance for reseating for a failed exam.
Types Of Counseling Certifications: Salaries for Counseling Certification
One of the best things about being a professional in the field of knowledge is the salary part. Imagine a situation whereby your salary earned in your career profession is 3, 4 and above figures, you will never remain the same. When talking about good salary earners, you can never skip the counselors, no matter the certification.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, current Occupational Outlook Handbook, an average annual salary earned by a licensed mental health counselor is $42, 840. Although, based on the specialization, the actual salary may differ. Years of experience and location are also contributing factors for the variation in actual salary. These are the list of salaries of different specialization in the field of counseling: Mental Health Counseling—$42,840, Rehabilitation Counselor–$34,670, substance abuse counselor, $41,070, Marriage and Family Therapist—$49,170, School and Career Counselor $54,560.
Types Of Counseling Certifications: Why are Some Counselors paid higher than the other
Your degree and certification level determine how you are paid as a counselor. For instance, those counselors that work at the local or state government agencies are the highest paid counselors. This was announced by the Bureau of Labor (BLS) and then followed by hospitals and then residential care centers. Generally speaking, private practices counselors and those employed in a group had the highest pay in counseling psychology compare to other companies that employ counselors for their services.
Types Of Counseling Certifications: How Lucrative is counseling Certification jobs
BLS has recently reported that the demand for specialization such as mental health counseling is expected to grow by 20 percent from now through the year 2026. This indicates that the demand rate is faster than every other occupation.
Types Of Counseling Certifications: What types of Companies employ Counselors
You may also like to know the types of companies that hire counselors; here is the list of industries that employ counselors:
- Schools
- Detention facilities
- Hospitals
- Rehabilitation centers
- Public and private clinics
- Nursing homes
- Nursing homes
- Nursing homes
- Universities
- Government agencies
- Nursing homes
Any of the above counseling certifications can lead you to a better height in the pursuit of your future career. I advised that you select the one that is suitable for you.
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