More on this; one example of a career switch or career diversity option in this area is the "Dr. Laura" scenario (see http://www.drlaura.com/about/). The website mentions a California state license for Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor (MFCC).
Dr. Laura's original PhD degree is in an impressively hard science - physiology - but it has little or nothing to do with providing psychotherapy to patients. She might as well have been a chemical engineer.
So this is a career switch case study - and a possible option for others (psychotherapy, if not also becoming famous!).
California apparently changed the name of this license in 1999 to "Marriage and Family Therapist"; see http://www.bbs.ca.gov/consumer/what_is.shtml. I don't know yet if there is an equivalent license in other states.
California has two other professional licenses in this category, Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), and Licensed Educational Psychologist (LEP). "Psychotherapy" is prominently mentioned in the MFT and LCSW statutory language, but the statute doesn't actually say you have to have one of these licenses to call yourself a psychotherapist in California. I don't know if there have been any court decisions on this in California.
All the licenses require master's degrees of one sort or another. California accredits schools for MFT license preparation; see http://www.bbs.ca.gov/app-reg/mft_schools.shtml. Elsewhere on the site is a list of "approved" schools for MFT; not sure what that means.
They also supply videos on MFT and LCSW licensure at http://www.bbs.ca.gov/app-reg/licensing_QA.shtm.
The above is ONLY for California. I don't know yet what other states do. I've seen the LCSW credential in a lot more states than the others, so it may be more portable between states.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment