Mental Health Problems

Mental health counseling is a field that focuses on helping people to achieve mental and emotional wellness. The treatment plan will typically consist of seeing clients continuously throughout the year. Specific areas of specialization exist in mental health counseling, such as counseling for addiction, trauma, or youth services. If a mental health counselor specializes in youth services, he could work in a variety of different settings, such as a school or a behavioral health center.

This paper will define the mental health counseling profession and describe typical duties of the job, the population it serves, and the type of education needed. Mental health counseling began to be accepted as a professional career in the 1970s. Mental health counselors had been in existence prior but their role had only been loosely defined. When the American Mental Health Counselor Association was established in the mid-1970s, it cleared the path for a more defined career.

Soon the Association joined with the American Counseling Association and the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) was created. In order to be taken as a legitimate profession, the mental health counseling field was provided with a set of training standards provided by the American Mental Health Counselor Association, which required that professionals in the mental health counseling field obtain “60 semester credit hours and a minimum of 1,000 clock hours of clinical supervision” (New York Behavioral Health, 2018).

Mental health counseling is now recognized “as a primary mental health profession in the health care human resource statistics of the Center for Mental Health Services and the National Institute of Mental Health” (New York Behavioral Health, 2018). As Barden, Conley and Young (2015) point out, mental health counseling is now being integrated with other approaches to care for a more holistic service to clients.

There are a number of jobs one can pursue with a mental health counseling degree: · Licensed Professional Counselor · Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor · Human Services Educator · Higher Education Counselor · Student Affairs Administrator · Drug and Alcohol Counselor · Addictions Counselor · Licensed Mental Health Counselor These jobs are spread out through a variety of environments: from schools to behavioral health centers to counseling facilities that treat a variety of patients, there is a high demand for mental health counseling in the U.S.

According to U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of the best 100 jobs, mental health counselor ranks at #82 and is #10 in Best Social Service Jobs. As for pay, Mental Health Counselors earned “a median salary of $43,300 in 2017. The best-paid 25 percent made $55,850 that year” (U.S. News & World Report, 2018). The best paying cities for mental health counselors are New Jersey, Salt Lake City, and St. George, Texas, where the median salaries for the job are all above $70k per year.

In every city there are numerous job openings however, with average pay around $50k. Typical job duties include: Gathering client histories through chart review and interviewing clients and family members when necessary; conducting cognitive, behavioral, and clinical testing; gathering client history and initial mental health assessment information; participating in interdisciplinary team meetings for development of client mental health treatment goals; implementating mental health interventions; evaluating client progress on an ongoing basis; and intervening with families when needed.

The mental health counselor is responsible for using various counseling techniques and approaches determined by the client’s needs and comfort. The job is typically performed wherever it is needed: in behavioral health centers, outpatient clinics, malls, schools, health care facilities or private offices. As Grohol (2018) notes, “according to the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 552,000 mental health professionals practicing in the U.S.

today whose main focus is the treatment (and/or diagnosis) of mental health.” The populations served by mental health counselors are all populations, including children, minorities, and adults. As Garret, Baldridge, Benson, Crowder and Aldrich (2015) and Hartmann and Gone (2016) point out, one population that is in dire need of mental health counseling is the Native American population, as this population has one of the highest rates of depression and suicide of any group in the U.S.

Education needed for the job is a Master’s degree to practice independently with 2000 to 4000 hours of supervised training under a certified professional required for credentialing. Continuing education is needed to maintain one’s professional certificate. The professional has to continue to study on new developments in the field so that best practices can be incorporated into treatment plans.

Multicultural competency development is one of the areas that is recommended for continuing education in mental health counseling as the country and the world becomes more diverse as a result of globalization and increased ease of travel (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler & McCullough, 2016). There are also various therapeutic approaches that are recommended by researchers that can be studied to enhance one’s professional career, such as music therapy (Silverman & Bibb, 2018).

Strengths that make me a good candidate for the job are my ability to focus on people’s needs and work with them to identify goals that they can work towards to improve their overall wellness. The mental health counselor has to be a good listener and has to have strong social and emotional intelligence skills, all of which I possess.

The counselor also has to be a dedicated student with a lifelong interest in learning more about the latest research in mental health counseling, which I definitely am because it is such a fascinating field. Professional development that I will need to be qualified to hold the job will be a Master’s degree plus 2000 supervised hours. This will allow me to apply for certification to be a professional mental health counselor.

Once I have this certification, I can apply to various clinics, schools, or open my own private office. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of these environments. To practice independently, one needs a strong client base and that may be difficult to obtain on one’s own. Working as part of a group will enable one to have steady clientele, but it will also mean giving up a percentage of.