I am opposed to this Virginia measure as it poses huge concerns:

• All counselors work tremendously hard through graduate programs, clinical training, and more to get where they are today.

• It will end Maryland reciprocity with Virginia, as I understand it. Thus, it divides colleagues/collegiality in the DC Metro area.

• This proposal segregates, discriminates, divides the profession, and disenfranchises us all.  The people most at harm, however, are those who need help.  It makes being a mental health consumer that much more difficult and confusing.  

• Your Virginia proposal gives citizens less choice, more confusion, and creates drama in the counseling world -- and drama is what most clients/mental health patients have in their lives.  They need less of it; not more.

•  This discrimination, I think, may be aimed at marketing some schools over others that are just as esteemed with hard working faculty and rigorous requirements. 

• Are you really going to tell me that the education I received at Johns Hopkins University was bad?  I went to JHU in my 40s, spent three years part-time in graduate school, took time off paid work to complete thousands of clinical hours in order to help people.  Your plan essentially tells me "all that doesn't matter now."  Seriously?

I urge the Virginia Board of Counseling to seek a better solution to this controversial proposal that incredibly discriminates against helping professionals, divides those of us in our field, and ignites nothing good.  With all due respect, I  personally think you are doing a lot of damage to the profession of clinical/licensed counseling.  Do no harm, please.

Loriann Oberlin, MS, LCPC

Loriann Oberlin Counseling & Mediation, LLC 

Author: Overcoming Passive-Aggression • The Angry Child  • Surviving Separation & Divorce