Advocacy is key for the clinical mental health counseling profession. Clinical mental health counselor advocates (CMHCAs) rely on the advocacy competencies to guide their assistance to clients in removing barriers and to secure deserving resources, or to advocate on behalf of clients, groups, or communities. This chapter addresses the importance of advocacy and social justice advocacy, and the strategic positionality of the clinical mental health counselor as an advocate for addressing social and institutional barriers that reduce client access, equity, and success. It identifies the advocacy competencies and approaches to advocate for clients care, and emphasizes the ways that they foster resilience and growth. Specific cases illustrate clients' and professionals' understandings of and access to a variety of community-based resources. The chapter also addresses strategies to advocate for the profession and for clinical mental health counseling professionals.

This chapter sheds light on how the managed care system works as well as the counselor's role in managed care and the importance of advocacy and issues related to payment and reimbursement. It offers a starting point to understand the system, and counselors must continue to seek more resources, join organizations and build networks with other counselors and change makers to become active members of the professional community. Managed care is an integral part of the healthcare system, and it is imperative for counselors to be able to understand the system in order to navigate it better. Counselors can anticipate the issues that are related to cost and payments and can provide more efficient service to the clients, if they understand how managed care system operates. The chapter demystifies the issues of payment for counseling services, specifically third-party billing, managed care, medical assistance programs, and other issues therein.

The practice of professional counseling is governed at the national and state levels by a variety of governing boards and regulatory agencies. This chapter focuses on the legal and ethical issues that are salient to clinical mental health counselors. Specifically, it discusses the American Counseling Association (ACA) Code of Ethics, the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) Code of Ethics, state licensure and national certification, confidentiality, mandated reporting, duty to warn, and scope of practice. The chapter also focuses on the responsibility of counselors to engage in ethically based practice. In addition, the chapter connects the ACA and AMCHA ethical codes and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs standards to several topics in ethical practice, including values clarification, bias assessment, boundary awareness and maintenance, and self-reflection. The chapter concludes with a case scenario to illustrate chapter concepts and a section on resources to provide further information.

It is important for beginning Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) students to understand that their engagement in the CMHC specialty is one part of the larger professional counseling framework. This chapter provides a historical overview of the counseling profession and its developmental trajectory, emphasizing the origins of mental health treatment and the reemergence of counseling as a wellness-based approach. It offers discussion concerning the push toward a pathogenic model of conceptualizing mental illness and the subsequent, current resurgence of a strength-based notion of care. The chapter provides an overview of the major theories of counseling as a means for understanding the development of counseling as a unique and separate field from psychology, psychiatry, and social work. It identifies the specializations within the counseling field, the range of employment opportunities and the current labor market, and how counseling is integrated within a system-of-care approach.

To set the stage for what counselors need to know, this chapter introduces the reader to an overview of theories that lay a foundation for working with adult clients. It provides a discussion of theoretical perspectives that relate to both individual development and contextual factors. To capture this intersection of influence, the chapter highlights Erikson’s (1950, 1963) psychosocial stage model, along with contextual and life span perspectives of adult development. It introduces the transition perspective, delving into the transition process itself. Adults face times that are increasingly challenging. A central theme in our current social context is change, reflecting the dynamic impact of forces across demographic, social, cultural, technological, political, and historical domains. A theory is a set of abstract principles that can be used to predict facts and to organize them within a particular body of knowledge.

Groups have been around since the beginning of humankind and across all cultures. People have historically gathered into groups to create, achieve, and resolve matters that would be otherwise impossible. Besides the potential to accomplish tasks, groups are sources of meaning and belonging, meeting needs for personal contact and interaction. This chapter focuses on group counseling as a useful modality for facilitating transition work with clients. Groups are complex, requiring counselors to combine individual counseling and group-leadership skills. It begins with some general information about the unique value of groups and discusses factors that are relevant to group work, including therapeutic factors, cultural diversity, and multicultural competencies. It also illustrates the different types of groups designed for adults who are experiencing various types of transitions. The chapter turns to an examination of the value of groups in helping people assess their assets and liabilities in each of 4 S areas.

Counseling adults in transition is an exciting and challenging job that gives us an opportunity to function at many different levels. Advocacy, consulting, and program development are three ways that one can assist the clients with their transitions–through changing the situation, enhancing their sense of self, developing more supports, and increasing the strategies available to them. Some counselors now work in the corporate world, and others are community organizers; some counselors design programs in colleges and universities, whereas others develop workshops for senior centers; some walk the halls of legislatures as lobbyists, whereas still others talk about mental health on talk shows, on their own or others’ blogs, on twitter, or other internet sites and social media. This chapter talks about a variety of ways counselors can do these things, including consulting, developing programs, and advocacy.

This chapter reviews the current scope of practice in rehabilitation counseling and the impact that counselor licensure legislation has on the field concerning eligibility for counselor licensure and becoming an independent rehabilitation practitioner. It defines the foundational skills and scope of practice required for effective, competent, and ethical rehabilitation counseling practice. The chapter explains a psychosocial model for rehabilitation counselors (RCs) who want to structure therapeutic interactions with clients who have chronic illnesses and disabilities. The counselor uses the counseling relationship to help clients draw from their personal history, knowledge, coping abilities, resiliency skills, and overall life experiences to derive meaning. Counselors across a variety of work settings and theoretical orientations must be proficient, competent, and ethical in working with a range of people with disabilities who may be culturally different. There are both universal and specific counseling approaches, programs, and services used during therapeutic interactions for people with disabilities.

Developmental considerations provide great implications for counselors. Development follows a path that is continuously impacted by systemic, relational, and multicultural influences. These influences impact how children make sense out of and act in response to critical life circumstances. Incorporating a developmental perspective when counseling children and adolescents and aiding them in successfully mastering tasks at various developmental milestones continues to be a core and essential component of counseling. Children’s level of development effects how they respond to creative and time-efficient counseling strategies, interventions, and modalities. This chapter identifies the relationship between social, emotional, and mental health maturation with child and adolescent development. It demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of how developmental theory frameworks inform crafting and integrating client-centered counseling interventions, strategies, and best practice methods. The chapter develops an awareness of counseling implications when working with children with diverse developmental histories.