Prelicensed therapists and counselors face a difficult road. Getting to licensure is a long and expensive process, so much so that even many well-qualified people drop out.
All of us here at Psychotherapy Notes want to make your path to licensure a little easier. So we’ve collected resources here that can help you along the way. You may already be familiar with some, but hopefully some are new and useful to you. Here are some essential resources for prelicensed therapists.
If you have a recognized disability, you can apply for a quiet room, additional time, or other appropriate accommodations for your licensing exam. Exact rules, and the process for applying, will vary by state. But every state has to make reasonable accommodations in the exam process under federal law.
Though there is little hard data, I’ve heard from multiple people who work for state licensing boards around the country that requests for disability accommodations are becoming more common in license exams for psychologists, counselors, social workers, and family therapists.
It is certainly debatable what an ideal pass rate for licensing exams should be. If the pass rate is high, that means almost everyone gets through. Then the tests don’t serve a meaningful function. (That’s pretty much the status quo.) If the pass rate is low, it raises questions about the validity of the exam, given how much time most examinees spend preparing for it. But what makes a pass rate too high or too low? Given that the exams don’t do much of anything anyway, it’s hard to say for sure.
But it does raise eyebrows when pass rates for a single exam fall off a cliff, as seems to have happened for California MFTs over the past year.
The world of online therapy continues to develop rapidly. There are now dozens of videoconference platforms designed or marketed specifically to therapists. The research base is steadily growing. States and provinces are working feverishly to provide clarity in law for therapists working online.
In such a rapidly-changing environment, it can be difficult for therapists to reasonably assess the current state of online psychotherapy. Here’s what we can safely say we know as of April 2017. Unless otherwise noted, “online therapy” here refers to interactive, video-based work. Other forms of technology, including phone, text, and chat, are often used in therapy, but less is known about them.
In a major victory for marriage and family therapists, the Texas Supreme Court today ruled that MFTs can independently diagnose in accordance with the DSM. The ruling was surprising, given that the Court had denied review of the case last year. In an unusual move, the court agreed to reconsider the case last fall.