Counseling

In a counseling degree program you will be taught to apply the knowledge you gained in mental health, psychology, and developmental principals to effect cognitive and behavioral change in your patients.

We all have the capacity to help others. The human mind is an extremely complex operating system, a facet of ourselves that we learn more about daily yet still remains largely a mystery. The society we live in today is equally complex, an ever-changing and elusive collaboration of interactions. In short, this life and world can be overwhelming at times, stressful and confusing, posing problems that have no easy answer. Regardless, one thing will always ring true, it helps to talk. Counselors listen. Counselors apply their specialized training and perceptive thinking to work with all members of our society, on any number of issues, at every stage of life.

The arena of counseling degrees is as vast as the issues which they help treat. You will be taught to apply the knowledge you gained in mental health, psychology, and developmental principals to effect cognitive and behavioral change in your patients. Counseling degree programs cater to all walks of life, whether it’s schooling guidance, substance abuse treatment, marriage counseling, self esteem, sex, violence or death. Because this field is so open-ended, your personal interests and strengths need to be taken into account early, so you can choose the correct path of education with the proper level of merit. Many people working in the counseling profession today received their undergraduate degree in a closely related field, such as psychology, sociology or social work. Finding a Bachelor’s program in Counseling is less common than the general areas of study mentioned above. There are some opportunities, like substance abuse or social work, which only requires an undergraduate degree, but many professions in the mental health field require a graduate degree and proper certification. The level and type of counseling degrees you need is contingent upon your desired career specialization. The graduate level of counseling degree programs will narrow your scope of knowledge to highly specialized fields, such as mental health or vocational guidance. The Doctoral degree is the most prestigious and highly specialized and will further expand your career options. Because our understanding of people is always changing, so is the curriculum and understanding of counseling, therefore your counseling degrees will serve as your foundation in a lifetime of education and service to those around you.

Mental health counselor, school counselor, vocational counseling, substance abuse and rehabilitation, marriage and family therapy, the careers available to those with counseling degrees are extensive, but also highly specialized and controlled. Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia have some sort of counselor licensure requirement, but these requirements differ from state to state. Research as to what qualifications and certifications your state and specialty need is something that is absolutely necessary when planning a career in counseling. This should start with determining whether the counseling degree programs you’re looking into are accredited by organizations such as the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs, the American Psychological Association, or the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. All 50 states require some sort of licensure for marriage and family therapy, and all school counselors must be state certified. Understanding the parameters surrounding your chosen specialty is essential in establishing a long and productive career in counseling. Don’t let the details bog you down, careers in counseling are abundant and growing, in 2008 counselors held over 660,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number is expected to grow faster than the average employment rate, with a projected increase of 18 percent in the decade between 2008 and 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.