Launching a University Tele-mental Health Counseling Training Clinic: A Case Study

Abstract

1 University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA 2 University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA 3 University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA Counselor Education programs have historically prepared and trained trainees for the in person realities of the mental and behavioral health workforce. To aid in that training, counselor education programs in the United States have a long history of conducting clinical instruction in on-campus university counseling training clinics (Meyers & Smith, 1995) and community sites. These programs are typically described as brick and mortar clinics (see Hittner and Fawcett, 2012). While the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Program (CACREP, 1994) at one time developed standards for what were formerly known as counselor education laboratories, current CACREP (2016) standards no longer include such guidance. Holden and Kern (1996) described a case study in the physical design of an on-campus counselor education clinic, and Myers (1994) edited a volume on the topic of developing counselor education libraries. However, this work from the 1990s pre-dates the advent of web-based video conferencing technologies and consequently offers no guidance on the implementation of such technology in a modern counselor education training clinic. Despite the technology and infrastructure of telehealth being available since the mid 1990s, there was not a wide adoption among counselor educators to train students to utilize telehealth options or for community mental health clinicians in seeing clients virtually. The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic has literally forced mental health providers to see clients remotely and amplified the need for telehealth training models, as Ortiz and Levine (2021) describe in their recent article. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has required that Counselor Education programs teach and provide training to students on effectively utilizing telehealth options. While many Counselor Education programs heavily rely on community sites to provide the necessary practicum and internship experiences for their trainees, many community sites during the pandemic were not able to provide telehealth options to their clients, supervisors were not trained in telehealth or virtual supervision, and many counselor education programs did not provide comprehensive training needed for students to know how to provide ethical and competent counseling in telehealth long term. However, from March 2020, the need to adopt and increase training in telehealth is no longer an innovative idea or elective, but With this article the authors hope to establish a precedent of publishing case studies in technology related implementation in counselor education and supervision with a focus on factors that drive as well as hinder such implementation. This case study described the design, proposal and implementation of a telemental health training clinic at the University of San Diego in San Diego, CA. Additionally, the authors highlight lessons learned and recommendations for other counselor educators seeking to implement similar training clinics at their universities. Emerging, Experimental and Current Topics Relevant to Technology in Counselor Education, Supervision and Practice