Introduction
Counselors in the USA are a large and distinct category of mental health professionals, although counseling is not recognized as a core mental health profession by the US government’s Department of Health and Human Services. There is no national licensure in the USA, as all mental health licensing is legislated at the state level. A master’s degree in counseling is required for licensure. A licensed counselor’s education and clinical training can include a subspecialty of marriage, couple, and family counseling; however, state licensure laws in general are title certifications, not practice specializations. This means counselors not licensed as marriage and family therapists (MFT) generally cannot advertise themselves as marriage, couple, and family counselors (MCFC) or its equivalent but may be permitted to perform couple and family counseling as a subset of their scope of practice as licensed professional counselors (LPC). For counselors committed to acquiring education...
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Thomas, F.N. (2017). Training Counselors in Couple and Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_690-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_690-1
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