Social workers help people solve everyday problems such as finding food or shelter, accessing healthcare, or dealing with an emergency. These professionals may work for a school, hospital, or public agency.
Addiction Counselors. Addiction counselors specialize in helping people who are dealing with alcoholism or substance abuse. This profession continues to grow rapidly as more people seek help for addiction and more judges weigh counseling over jail time as a solution for addiction.
Becoming an addiction counselor usually requires a graduate or undergraduate counseling degree. Recreational Therapists. Recreational therapists direct recreational programs for people with disabilities or those recovering from injuries. Recreational therapists often need to hold a certified therapeutic recreation specialist credential.
More advanced positions may require certification in a specific technique or area of practice. How do I become an online counselor? However, some helping professions do not need a counseling degree. How do you become a licensed counselor or therapist? How do you become a licensed mental health counselor? How do you become a certified counselor or therapist? Graduates can then take the Counselor Preparation Comprehensive Examination. What degree is needed to be a psychologist?
To get licensed as a psychologist, students need to earn a doctoral degree. While many psychologists earn a Ph. D, a doctor of education Ed. Online College Resources Helping you prepare and gain the most out of your educational experience. Consider these tips as society returns to a new normal. Your financial situation should not prevent you from securing care for your mental health.
Discover ways that you can find free and affordable therapy options. Are you ready to find your fit? Discover What Matters Counseling vs. Collapse All Expand All. Some career paths can also take you into a particular specialty. A substance abuse therapist works with people dealing with addiction while a marriage and family therapist focuses on relationship issues. Likewise, a licensed school psychologist works with children in a school system.
A licensed social worker often works in the broader community, though this can have specialties as well. You might choose to focus on families, schools, public health, substance abuse, corrections, or the community in general.
Yet another career option is to study for a degree as a rehabilitation therapist. In this path, you may do a mixture of work with mental health as well as the physical health side. It primarily involves working with people who have disabilities or injuries to help them get the most out of their lives. These are some of the more common examples and there are additional types of practice that you can pursue. If you have a particular interest, discuss it with an advisor and they can point out all your options.
While becoming a therapist might be your goal, the steps that you take to achieve it depends largely on the type of therapist you want to become.
Therapists work in a wide range of settings and with diverse populations, so start your planning process by considering where you would like to work. Do you want to work with children? Becoming a clinical psychologist or licensed social worker are good options for reaching this goal.
If on the other hand, you are interested in working with families or couples, a licensed marriage and family therapist or mental health counselor may be right for you. Do you want to help people overcome substance abuse problems? A degree in clinical psychology or mental health counseling might be a good option. As you might quickly realize, there are nearly as many degree options as there are job descriptions for different types of therapists.
By getting a general idea of what you would like to achieve as a therapist, you will be in a better position to select a school and choose a degree option. If your goal is to become a therapist, your first step will probably be to earn a bachelor's degree in psychology. However, people with undergraduate degrees in other fields are often accepted into graduate training programs provided they make up some of the prerequisite coursework.
Sociology, education, and health sciences are also good choices for students interested in becoming therapists. While an advanced degree in psychology can open up a wide variety of career options, there are several other program choices that you may also want to consider. The amount of time and training required to complete each degree varies. Earning a Ph. Professionals who have earned a doctorate and become licensed psychologists can work with clients in a wide range of settings, including private practice.
Earning a doctorate often takes between four and eight years of study beyond an undergraduate degree. In some states, individuals with a master's degree can become licensed psychologists. Master's degree holders can also work in a number of different mental health care settings.
It is important to check the guidelines in your state to determine what type of services you can provide with this degree. The focus of studies for doctoral students depends on many factors. Firstly, Ph. Secondly, there are many different areas of study that doctoral students can pursue in preparation for a career as a psychotherapist.
These include child and adolescent psychology, marriage and family therapy , psychotherapy, and clinical psychology , just to name a few. Though there are many tracks doctoral students can take, each program typically requires students to complete advanced studies in:. Online degree programs in psychotherapy do not exist, per se. That is, students instead must pursue online degrees in related fields or degrees that will prepare them for future studies.
Much like an on-campus program, undergraduate degrees that are obtained online require around credit hours to complete. Again, these programs could be completed online in as little as a year or it might take two to three years to complete the degree requirements.
There are even some online degree programs for doctorate degrees, though these programs are far less common than online undergraduate and graduate degrees. However, no matter the level at which a student pursues his or her studies online, these programs offer many benefits.
That is, rather than having to take classes at specific times, online students can complete their studies when it best fits into their daily schedule. Another benefit of studying to become a psychotherapist online is that it can often be less expensive.
When students attend a brick-and-mortar school, there are usually fees associated with everything from parking to library services, which can often be avoided by studying online. For example, an advantage of studying on-campus is that students can interact with one another and their professors in a way that fosters improved learning. These include:. Analytical Skills — Students that study psychotherapy must be able to pick up on minute details that help them diagnose and treat mental and behavioral disorders.
Listening Skills — Psychotherapy degree programs focus a lot on building content knowledge, but they also require students to apply their skills to working with actual clients. As such, students must have excellent active listening skills that allow them to engage their clients in a symbiotic therapy relationship.
If a psychotherapist cannot actively listen and engage with their client, progress will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Emotional Intelligence — Studies in this field require students to be attuned not just to the emotional needs of others, but to their own emotional needs, strengths, and shortcomings as well.
This goes beyond recognizing if someone is mad or sad, and extends into understanding what makes people including oneself behave the way they do. Students must develop the skills required to conduct objective research, make and test hypotheses, and draw well-informed conclusions based upon their findings. Emotional Stamina — Psychotherapists work with clients that have any number of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems. As a result, students that wish to work in this field must be mentally and emotionally strong enough to help their clients process feelings and emotions related to anything from loved ones dying to being physically abused to being depressed.
Flexibility and Patience — Psychotherapy is not a short-term solution. Instead, some clients will be in therapy for months or even years. As a result, students must possess the personal qualities of flexibility and patience, that way when they begin work, they can adapt their treatment plan to changing circumstances, work with clients that may or may not be fully invested in therapy, and see their treatment plan through to the end with their clients.
One of the benefits of getting a degree in psychotherapy is that there are many different career paths you can take. Psychotherapist — Obviously, majoring in psychotherapy is an excellent way to prepare yourself for a career in psychotherapy. Many workers in this field choose to venture out on their own in private practice, which offers some leeway with working hours and the clientele served. For example, a self-employed psychotherapist might work exclusively with a certain age group, like children, or with a certain population, like people with anxiety disorders.
Substance Abuse Counselor — The knowledge and skills acquired while completing a degree in psychotherapy are well suited for work as a substance abuse counselor. Workers in this field use their analytical and research skills to diagnose the substance abuse problem and develop a treatment plan, and their therapeutic skills to offer individual and group counseling to people that suffer from a substance abuse problem.
Behavioral Health Counselor — Much like substance abuse counselors work with people that have an alcohol or drug problem, behavioral health counselors focus their attention on clients that have behavioral problems. This means that counselors in this field might have a much wider range of clients, including those that suffer from a behavioral disorder i.
Psychology Teacher — In some cases, psychotherapists will practice in the field for a number of years, and then use their knowledge, skills, and experience to teach future psychotherapists in a college or university setting.
For example, a psychology professor at a university might teach courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, in addition to conducting research on a topic of their choice, like the incidence of autism in certain ethnic groups.
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