Student loan debt has been a regular topic here, as it should be. Mental health professionals need to have graduate degrees, which often means taking on significant debt. The American Psychological Association reports that PsyD students in psychology now graduate with a median of $200,000 in student debt just from their graduate studies. The federal government offers loan forgiveness for those who work in government and nonprofit organizations, through its Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Recently, there’s been some concern over the fate of that program. Therapists and counselors currently working in nonprofit settings wonder whether they will in fact be eligible — or whether the program will still exist — by the time they complete 10 years of service. But their concern is (at least so far) not supported by what’s actually been happening.
I just took the California MFT Clinical Exam and the National MFT Exam within a month of each other. When scheduling both of these exams, my hope was that I could study once, and then ace both. Here, I’ll outline the similarities and differences I noticed between the two exams.
In every state, and for every psychotherapist license, there is a supervised experience requirement. Those requirements differ a bit from state to state and between license types, but they all hover around the same place: two years of full-time experience or the equivalent, typically operationalized as 3,000 hours. Where did that standard come from, and how has it changed over time? You may be surprised.
I’m a young therapist. I started my graduate program at 23 years old and finished at 25. When I first started seeing clients in a school setting, I was 24, and their parents were often in their 40s or 50s. 
At the August meeting of the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, I had a tense exchange with representatives from the state’s Office of Professional Examination Services about pass rates for the California MFT Clinical Exam. That pass rate has