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How Can a Mental Health Counselor Help?

A mental health counselor helps you tackle the root causes of your behavioral and cognitive problems.

What is Mental Health Counseling?

Knowing when to seek medical advice and attention for your loved ones or yourself is crucial. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over five million Americans will have a mental health condition in 2020. However, only half of this number receive psychotherapy treatment.1

Mental health conditions affect all parts of your life, including relationships, work, social, and school life. Luckily, mental health counselors are able to help guide you through your mental health problems and find the best treatment option.

Mental Health Counselor

Understanding Mental Health Counseling

A mental health counselor gets a professional license to help treat cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of mental health problems. However, counseling varies depending on the situation, like treatment facilities, private settings, and more. Counseling for mental health often occurs either in groups, families, or individuals.

Why Clinical Mental Health Counseling is Important

It is important to seek clinical mental health training to:

  • Develop healthy habits that encourage a healthy lifestyle
  • Restore, preserve and strengthen your mental health status
  • Identify your stressors
  • Know how to identify and prevent triggers
  • Learn different coping techniques for mental health

Who Are Mental Health Counselors?

A mental health counselor converse with patients about their symptoms and the available treatment options. They work hand in hand with patients to create treatment plans and refer them to other social workers or mental health providers.

A licensed mental health counselor may work with other medical providers like psychologists to offer a holistic recovery. For instance, treating co-occurring disorders through psychotherapy and medications.  

Methods and Approaches of Mental Health Counseling

In some states, a mental health counselor diagnoses mental health conditions and uses psychotherapy techniques like: 2

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Enables patients to identify negative thinking patterns and how to cope.
  • Psychodynamic Therapy: Targets how emotions influence interpersonal relationships.
  • Interpersonal Therapy: Targets how psychological symptoms affect personal interactions.

Training

A mental health counselor may take six to eight years to complete the required education and get licensed. However, this time depends on the course and expertise you want to have in counseling mental health. First, you must finish a bachelor's degree in social science, psychology, or behavioral science. This may typically last for four years before obtaining a master's degree in mental health counseling, which takes around two years.

Next, you must acquire hands-on experience while finishing your master's or after completing it. The internship may involve working for two or four thousand hours of mental health counseling experience. The training generally takes one to two years, depending on your work. Some mental health counselor requirements may be an additional two to three years for a doctorate in counseling.

Education

The minimum education requirement for a mental health counselor is a bachelor's degree in a human service field, like psychology, social work, or behavioral science, and often calls for a master’s degree in a similar field as well.

Skills

Apart from education and training, you will be treating and working with people. Hence, you need to understand that people are different, require extra attention, and need different other ways to relate. You also have to have good communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and people skills. You also should handle stress well, as some patients may be angry or combative.

How Can a Mental Health Counselor Help?

Apart from education and training, you will be treating and working with people. Hence, you need to understand that people are different, require extra attention, and need different other ways to relate. You also have to have good communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and people skills. You also should handle stress well, as some patients may be angry or combative.

  • Understand your feelings
  • Identify issues impacting your mental health
  • Research ways to help you overcome mental issues
  • Promote healthy lifestyles
  • Help you learn and practice healthy coping methods
  • Help you set goals for your mental and personal growth
  • Restore your mental health

Common Issues Mental Health Counselors Can Help With

Counseling for mental health often includes working with your cognitive therapist to achieve the desired purpose. A mental health counselor will help you tackle the following conditions, from identifying the triggers, causes, and effects to coping strategies:

Anxiety and Depression

Depression is a constant feeling of sadness and loneliness that interferes with the daily activities you love, like your hobbies. In contrast, anxiety is a continuous feeling of fear that paralyzes. A clinical mental health counselor will help you face these two mental disorders through psychotherapy. 3

Physical or Mental Abuse

Therapy sessions with a clinical mental health counselor will help you explore emotions like anger, grief, or dread that may have been created by psychological or physical abuse.

Relationship Problems

Mental health counseling services like individual and couples therapy, mindfulness practices, and hotlines can help you manage relationship issues and work through them with your partner or family.

Suicidal Ideation

Mental counseling for suicidal thoughts may include talking to a mental health counselor and devising coping mechanisms.  

Mental Health Counselor

Benefits of Getting Help from a Mental Health Counselor

The counseling journey is more of an educational process for the client and licensed mental health counselor. Here, learning more about the patient enables the counselor to know the best methods to treat their conditions. This allows the therapist and the client to learn more about different aspects of the patient’s situation because each patient has unique needs.

You can benefit from a mental health counselor as a client in the following ways:

  • Improving your interpersonal and communication skills
  • Outstanding self-acceptance and self-esteem
  • Learn ways to manage your emotions
  • Learn to recognize distorted thinking patterns
  • Relieves your mental health conditions
  • You gain great confidence and decision-making skills
  • Stress management ability

Get Help from A Mental Health Counselor at Anew Treatment Center

Get professional mental health help at Anew Treatment Center. If you or a loved one are battling mental health disorders, our mental health counseling program will help you identify the issue, discuss the best treatment approaches to set realistic goals, and develop an effective treatment plan. Contact us today for a treatment plan that will allow you to work through mental health issues.

Learn More About Our Treatment Programs

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