Mental Health Counselor Career Analysis

Becoming a licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor is not as easy as people may think. Every state has a different process to become a licenses counselor. This paper discusses the difference between prices, hours to even credits. I will be comparing the state of Florida and New York. There are certain process that are the same yet many different. As a student going to school for Clinical Mental Health Counseling you would think every state would be the same.

The money you make as a psychiatrist isn't always set in stone so to say. The money you make depends on many things. The place you work in a prison, military territory, etc. The city could even change your pay. The three best paying cities in the field are San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Which includes possibilities for bonuses and profit sharing (whatever that is), peaking near $26,000 and $138.000, total cash payment. Psychiatrists can reach the lowest of near $100,000 or at its highest near $273,000 depending on how good your performance is. The most influential factor affecting pay for this job is where you work, but career duration and the type of company you work for has an impact as well however less so. Job satisfaction

I chose mental health counseling as a profession due to personal experiences in my life. As a survivor of domestic violence, I felt a strong desire and need to make a difference with people, especially women and children of lower social economic classes, enabled due to lack of education, poverty disabled by of domestic violence.

The career path of vocational rehabilitation counselor has come to me later in my professional career and it is not a path I would have anticipated taking. I do not recall taking interest assessments in high school, but if I had I would have probably fallen into the category of conventional personality type on John Holland’s personality scale. My early educational pursuits leaned toward administrative and business type positions. Most of my career I have worked in positions that were structured, predictable and very routine. Even though I worked in positions such as these I was often called upon to teach, train and instruct new employees. I found the most satisfaction in my job when I would work with individuals helping them to learn new tasks and obtain new skills.

Mental Health Counselors are some of highest interacting people in the career industry. Having the highest ability to communicate with peers, you are faced with new challenges every single day. Many different types of people bring many different problems to the table. They are not expected to close the door due to the fact of not knowing how to help one. You will need a very high comprehension of the world around you, to be able to achieve high success rates in this career.

Often times choosing a career path that is compatible with a persons personality may not be as easy as one might believe it to be. On the other hand, once a person is fortunate to figuer out excaly what career path fit’s their personality, finding the job that best suits there finacial expectations usually becomes less of an mental strain. There are countless careers for all of us to choose from and if you enjoy’s helping those in need you may want to look into becoming a mental health counselor or a clinical social worker. However if you aren’t inerested in being too hands on with individuals in need there are two other careers that one may be interested in, which is Clinical management or Medical and Health management. These four professions are similar but different.

Becoming a mental health counselor wasn't an easy decision to come about. Hard to become prior to choosing to be a mental health counselor I have a desire to be a special-education teacher, specialize in working with children on the asperger's spectrum of autism. The reason I decided to choose to change my professional goals was because I thought as a counselor I will be able to work with children on different disabilities and adults on a one-to-one basis. Dream experience as a preschool teacher, many colleges have said that I have a sense of counseling and understanding when dealing with children and people. My previous class prior to this class give me a better understanding of what my goals are and how to reach them. So I truly believe

As a mental health counselor in training, I look forward to continuing the process of being aware of my own beliefs and biases. I also recognize that I am human and anticipate some life issues presented by clients will present challenges that I encounter.

To be a mental health counselor a high level of education is needed. Therefore a typical entry level of education is a master’s degree (BLS.gov). Most mental health therapist go to school for 4 years and get a master’s degree. Getting a master degree is what is required, but getting a higher degree would help with your career a lot. Going to school and getting a higher degree of level of education will help you’re salary increase (Careerinpsychology.org). Getting a bachelor of a PhD is going to increase pay and going to help you with more business, if in private practice. While getting an education a license is needed to work as a mental health counselor (Mentalhealthcounselor.org). Getting a license is required. Having a license will help

Mental Health Counselor is the career I have decided to go for. It took me forever and a lot of thinking to decide exactly what I want to do with my life. I have dealt with depression, anxiety, self harming all within myself. I also dealt with watching my father abuse alcohol, and getting cancer and passing. My daughter is ADHD, ODD and suffers with anxiety. I also work in a group home taking care of mentally challenged people. Altogether I've dealt with a lot and I think experiencing everything I have, would make me understand and be a good mental health counselor.

The population I am equipped to work with are couples and families. This is a population that I can empathize with very easily, a driving force in my counseling career and one very dear to my heart. My life experiences has led to a great desire to help save marriages when they can be saved, work with families and especially children from divorced families. Relationships is another area I would love to specialize in to grow in my career. Very little effort is placed on "how to" do relationships, how to grow into a great husband, a great wife or mold great children who will become great partners in the future. These areas will be my main focus points and maybe one day I can write a book on the subject.

In this career cluster assignment, I chose to look into Therapeutic Services. Therapeutic Services are careers that focus mainly on changing the health status of a patient over time (“CNFC.org”, 2001). I chose to compare three careers that fall under these services, which are Speech Language Pathology, Registered Nursing, and Massage Therapy. Although they all fall under the same cluster they differ in their own unique ways. These differences include education, income, skills, and requirements.

Mental health counselors are still facing barriers in employment with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Although in December 2010, the VA released the qualification of standards in hiring LPMHs, there is still a shortage of LPMHs (NBCC, ). Today there are about 0.001% or licensed professional counselor working at the VA compared to 25% of all U.S. mental health professional (AAMF, n.d.). In 2015, the Department of Veterans concluded that license mental health counselor would be included in their hiring of 1,900 mental health staff positions (AAMF, n.d.). How can that be so when there is no series code for mental health counselors within the OPM. This is a limitation for mental health counselors when searching for a job within the Department

We as people live at intersections. We have multiple identities that form the complex people that we are. It is important when providing services to others that we acknowledge and respect those intersections. As a woman of color, a Chicana, oldest child from a working class family who was the first and only person in my family to graduate from college I see the world through many different lenses. Through the MSW program at St. Catherine University – University of St. Thomas I hope to continue my education, use my unique experiences, and pursue my long term career goal of working in the mental health field providing therapy to individuals and families. If accepted to this program I would like to apply to be considered as an Area of Emphasis

School counseling as always caught my attention. When I started my higher education, I had a focus on studying Elementary Education. However, after completing a college assignment for one of my psychology course, I found a very interested area in Psychology which is counseling. Since then, I have falling in love with counseling, and have spent a lot of time researching the career. I have conducted different interviews and have engaged in different counseling events that have helped me get to know the career. Therefore, when given this assignment, I felt more than prepared because I have spent a lot of time researching this career. However, I used the given source, ONET, to have more of a broad understanding about School Counseling.