Virginia Regulatory Town Hall View Comments

Department of Health Professions

Board of Counseling

Regulations Governing the Practice of Professional Counseling [18 VAC 115 ‑ 20]

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12/4/13 8:30 pm

Commenter: Tina Sheets, LPC, CSAC The Life Center of Galax

I support the petition as a graduate of the clinical psychology program of Radford University!

Including Virginia, there are six states that specifically do not accept Clinical Psychology Master’s degrees. The other 44 states either state that they do accept psychology degrees or that they would review the curriculum on a case by case basis. Most of the states I reviewed listed the course outlines, just as Virginia does, and if the curriculum meets the guidelines then the person would be accepted. Some of the states would review the program curriculum themselves and then verify that anyone from that program would be accepted. Many of the states I reviewed, if they did have a change in their regulations, there would be an effective date and persons who graduated before this date were granted an exception to the new laws.

Some people stated in their comments that people shouldn’t have gone into a psychology program if they wanted to be licensed as counselors. But, up until around 2009, there were many people I know licensed from the psychology program and there was no reason to expect otherwise. I don’t recall an official change in the regulations until 2011. So, most of the students had no reason to expect there to be a problem with licensure.

I believe placing distance between Psychology and Counseling can be detrimental due to the fact that they are integral to the other’s success. For example, most of the efficacy based counseling theories were created by psychologists. These two disciplines need to continue to work together in order to further the successes of counseling. If counseling and psychology separated into two separate distinctions I believe it will be harmful to both professions. Just because six states have made this distinction, doesn’t mean it’s best for the field of counseling. Another example would be if counselors couldn’t use the work of Rogers, Maslow, Ellis, or Linehan due to that being a different profession(psychology).

CommentID: 29516