Professional Clinical Counseling

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A professional clinical counselor is a mental health professional who provides counseling and psychotherapy to individuals, couples, families, and groups. They work in a variety of settings, including private practice, schools, hospitals, VAs, and community agencies. They can provide a range of services, including counseling, psychotherapy, assessments, diagnosis, evaluations, psycho-education, clinical case management, career counseling, and crisis services.

Professional clinical counseling means the application of counseling interventions and psychotherapeutic techniques to identify and remediate cognitive, mental, and emotional issues, including personal growth, adjustment to disability, crisis intervention, and psychosocial and environmental problems, and the use, application, and integration of the coursework and training.

Professional clinical counseling is focused exclusively on the application of counseling interventions and psychotherapeutic techniques for the purposes of improving mental health, and is not intended to capture other, nonclinical forms of counseling for the purposes of licensure. For purposes of this paragraph, “nonclinical” means nonmental health.

Counseling interventions and psychotherapeutic techniques means the application of cognitive, affective, verbal or nonverbal, systemic or holistic counseling strategies that include principles of 128 development, wellness, and maladjustment that reflect a pluralistic society. These interventions and techniques are specifically implemented in the context of a professional clinical counseling relationship and use a variety of counseling theories and approaches.



Assessment means selecting, administering, scoring, and interpreting tests, instruments, and other tools and methods designed to measure an individual’s attitudes, abilities, aptitudes, achievements, interests, personal characteristics, disabilities, and mental, emotional, and behavioral concerns and development and the use of methods and techniques for understanding human behavior in relation to coping with, adapting to, or ameliorating changing life situations, as part of the counseling process.

Professional clinical counselor education and training are on par with marriage and family therapists and clinical social workers.