Introduction

Advisor: Hello, Jane Student. I see that you have your next semester's classes all chosen and you seem to be on track with all of your requirements. Let's talk about what I think is the more important part of advising. What exactly do you want to do with your degree in psychology (or counseling or social work)?

Jane Student: (smiling dreamily) I really want to help people.

After, "I've been closed out of a class" (and I can't write a book to fix THAT problem), the preceding is probably the most common dialogue I have with my advisees. Now, please don't think I'm mocking the exchange. I had the same one with my advisor when I was Jane Student. I begin with this conversation because it was the inspiration for writing this book. You see, I would typically struggle with what my next line in the conversation should be, as there are myriad ways to proceed in order to develop a career helping people with mental health issues.

First, full disclosure - I have a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Over the last 20 years I have worked in various positions as a psychologist. During my internship I worked in a forensic unit in a prison, in a VA hospital, in an outpatient clinic, and on an adolescent ward of an inpatient hospital. After internship I was the staff psychologist at a juvenile justice facility and later at an adolescent group home. When I began having children of my own, I cut back my work hours and did clinical work part time at a community mental health agency and started teaching part time at a local college. I also achieved the Holy Grail of "helping people" and was an independent contractor at a private practice. I teach full time in a psychology department at a small liberal arts college and continue carrying a small client caseload at a private practice. I can say that I truly enjoyed all of these job opportunities and that I'm confident that I have been able to achieve my goal "helping people" many times over.

OK - back to what to say to Jane Student. Given my background, my first inclination when I began teaching (and advising) full time was to say "great, let's get going on those applications for a Ph.D. clinical psychology graduate program." I would also hand them a copy of one of the many "So You Want to be a Psychology Major" books I always have on my shelf. I'm also not mocking those books. They are very useful, and I referred to one when I was Jane Student as well. However, I quickly found that the books, as well as the Ph.D. in clinical psychology programs, were not appropriate for many of my students.

For example, some students, for family or financial reasons, did not envision at least four more years of school (plus a year-long internship) following college. Others had desire and time, but lacked the grades or the research experience it would take to get into what are very competitive clinical psychology graduate schools. Still others were dead set on not moving more than a few miles away from home, so their pickings of graduate programs in clinical psychology would be slim, to say the least.

Therefore, I wanted to find a more appropriate "next line" in my dialogue with my students. I began to do some research on the various degrees available to assist them in their quest to "help people" and in answer to some of their questions:

• What is the difference between a clinical and counseling psychologist?
• Is a Psy.D. a more appropriate degree than a Ph.D.?
• Mental health counseling? Is that different from what a counseling psychologist does?
• I think I want to do marriage counseling; should I just get a degree in marriage and family therapy?
• Does a social worker make more or less money than a counselor?
• What if I want to work in the schools? What does a school counselor do?
• What types of clients does a social worker help? Are they different from those that a psychologist helps?

I had hoped that I could just find a book on the topic and offer it to them. However, it appeared that any title on the subject dealt only with one type of degree. So, to examine all the alternatives, one would need to read through several books and try to synthesize the information. While I'm certainly not against students needing to synthesize information, I really thought there had to be a more succinct way to educate them about the various opportunities out there. Moreover, it is often difficult for students to get good "reads" on these things because each profession has a strong identity and strongly adheres to its own tenets. Therefore, when asked, many professors and/or professionals may be biased in favor of their own training. Further, many psychology professors who do not have a clinical or counseling background (such as social psychologists, cognitive psychologists, or experimental psychologists) are also in the dark about the various paths that students who desire a career in mental health can take. Their careers are more focused on research, and details of the clinical side of the profession are often not at their fingertips. This text can be helpful to those professors as well, since the majority of them will have advising responsibilities for psychology students who hope to "help people" by engaging in some type of counseling or therapy.

My goal is to delineate the similarities and differences in these helping professions in a nonbiased way. To make it easier to compare apples to apples, I have divided each chapter into the same sections:

• Overall philosophy and history of the profession (note that much of the history of the professions is intertwined. I have a section in each chapter for each profession but there may be some overlap.)
• Type of education needed
• The role that licensing plays in your chosen profession
• The types of jobs for which the degree will qualify you
• Earning potential

In this way, students can compare and contrast the various opportunities and decide which is right for them. This is an important endeavor because students spend several years in graduate work and are tied to the profession/license they achieve. It is in their best interest to understand thoroughly the field in which they are going to practice so that they can make the best decisions for themselves.

Now, having said that, let me make one significant notation. The general public (e.g., you right now) really has very little understanding of the distinctions between these professions. Indeed, the professionals in each discipline often do not understand the differences themselves. Further, the jobs that are available for each profession are often similar. Therefore, the choice you make as to which degree to obtain may not make as big a difference as you might expect. However, my experience with students is that they want to be informed and make choices about their careers, not just rely on some flip of a coin as to which direction they will chart a path.

One more caveat to the information we will be discussing is that I can really only give you a general overview of the information. You will have to take into consideration the specifics of each profession based on the state in which your reside and/or hope to practice. An example of this will be the information on licensing standards and salary, which will vary from state to state.

In the first part of the book I will examine each of the various professions you might choose. I will begin with psychology and discuss doctoral degrees in psychology; that is, Ph.D.s and Psy.D.s in both clinical and counseling psychology. Specifically, the distinctions and differences between these career paths will be discussed. Please understand that there are other specialties in which one can choose to earn a Ph.D. in psychology, such as industrial organizational, experimental, and social. While these specialties no doubt help people, it is typically not in the way that most undergraduates mean when they indicate an interest in helping people. If one of these might be your area of interest, please check out some other titles on graduate work in psychology, as there are several texts available. Next, a discussion of the social work profession and the various career options that exist within it will follow. Then the various types of counseling, including mental health counseling and marriage and, family therapy, will be examined. The specialty of substance abuse follows. Finally, a discussion of mental health professionals who work within the schools, school psychologists and school counselors, will follow.

Readers should also understand that there are career options for students who do not wish to attend graduate school. However, those options won't be covered in this work. One can easily find other manuals written with the "undergraduate degree only" student in mind.

Finally, I will not be discussing psychiatry in this text. As you may know, many people confuse the professions of psychiatry and psychology. Both carry the title of "doctor," but a psychiatrist is an M.D. and a psychologist is a Ph.D. A psychiatrist trains in the same way that every other M.D. trains, that is, 2 years of medical school, 2 years of supervised experience, and 4 years of residency. Psychiatrists will begin their training in the same way, with the same coursework and supervised experience as a pediatrician or a surgeon or an oncologist. It is during their residency that they specialize in their chosen area. For example, if someone chooses to be a...