Clinical Counseling Specialist Q&A

Clinical counselors use established mental health practices, techniques, and values that aid them through the session to achieve insight into existing challenges, earn emotional freedom from previous issues, and gain new skills and capacities.

A clinical counselor has registered with the BC Association of Clinical Counselling. The BC Association of Clinical Counselling binds counselors to a particular code of ethical conduct, which ensures educational standards, and demands that all of their members continue additional training within the mental health field as the main condition of their membership. These standards were set to help ensure that clinical counselors provide a high quality of service to each patient.

The main role of a clinical counselor is to facilitate the client in leading their own exploration and resolution of the issues that the client wants to focus on. Often clients will seek out clinical counseling when their normal problem-solving methods are unable to bring resolution to their difficult situation.

Clinical counseling and counseling over time have become blurred lines for most patients looking for advice and guidance about their life and issues. However, there are many differences between the two:

• Work with those clinical counselors and counselors do

Counselors focus on health patients who have much fewer pathological mental issues. While clinical counselors have a much stronger focus on the psychosis of other serious mental illnesses. Counselors are often involved with career and vocational assessment, and clinical counselors work with projective assessment training.

• Orientation of theory

Both clinical counseling and counseling overlap in theory and orientation during the study, the differences in clinical counseling are the counselors focus more on psychoanalytic persuasions and behavioral issues, while counselors focus on client-centered and humanistic traditions. The education ends with clinical counselors working in psychodynamic research, and counselors in cognitive behavior.

• Where they are employed

Places of employment like healthcare are becoming more holistic in nature, and due to this, we are seeing a trend of counselors and clinical counselors working in similar settings. Counselors are more often employed within university districts, providing counseling services to students and teachers alike. While clinical counselors will often work in hospital settings.

• Areas of research

Clinical counselors focus on psychopathological conditions when it comes to areas of research, while counselors focus on vocational assessment as well as cross-cultural/minority psychology in their areas of research.

• Complicated lines

Counselors often tend to stay within the interesting field of the humanistic approach, this is where they directly deal with behavioral issues; and clinical counselors prefer to stay within their interested field of serious mental illnesses and mental health issues, to the point hospitalization may be required.

Clinical counseling is the psychological specialty that provides comprehensive and continuing mental and behavioral healthcare for families, as well as individuals, and consultation methods to communities and agencies; education, supervision, training, and research-based practice.

This broadly inclusive specialty of counseling focuses on severe psychopathology. Clinical counselors tend to work with patients of all ages, varied systems, and multiple diversities.

Both registered counselors and registered clinical psychologists are considered mental health professionals. Both are considered assets to the mental health healthcare communities as they both assess and treat mental health conditions, and provide group and individual therapies.

However, many key differences differentiate a registered counselor and a registered clinical psychologist, these key differences include:

• Registered clinical psychologists can provide your child with a diagnosis. While registered counselors do have vast knowledge on the subject, the law states they are not allowed to diagnose mental health conditions.
• Registered clinical psychologists are able to assess for learning disabilities or difficulties by conducting a psychoeducational assessment on a patient
• Registered clinical psychologists also have advanced training at the doctoral level. While British Columbia’s registered clinical counselors usually only reach a minimum of a Master’s Degree. 

Our specialists at Prosper Health are here to help you tackle your mental health issues. To consult our professionals, call us or book an online appointment. We have convenient locations to serve you. We serve patients from Vancouver BC, Surrey BC, Burnaby BC, Richmond BC, Langley BC, and Coquitlam BC.