Master in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at SUNY Plattsburgh

Clinical Mental Health Counseling

Our Clinical Mental Health Counseling Master's Program Allows You To:

• Prepare for a career as a licensed mental health counselor working in community mental health settings.
• Foster Clinical Mental Health Counseling values, skills, and a helping orientation.
• Apply clinical treatment and prevention models to the holistic development of individuals, groups, and organizations.
• Benefit from courses that have been pre-approved by the State Education Department as conforming to the state licensure requirements for mental health counselors.
• Develop clinical skills in client assessment, diagnosis, psychosocial history writing, treatment planning, and progress documentation.
• Acquire skills in agency management, program planning, mental health services implementation and evaluation, case management, and consultation.

Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling

What is Clinical Mental Health Counseling?

The new clinical mental health counseling program (CMHC) is a 60 credit-hour master's degree program begun in January 2006. The clinical mental health counseling program has been approved by the New York State Education Department as a "license eligible" academic program, one that satisfies the state's educational requirements leading toward professional licensure as a mental health counselor. The clinical mental health counseling clinical training program emphasizes the knowledge, skills, ethical, and professional orientation to community mental health field, and assessment, how to use the DSM-IV-TR, write psychosocial histories and treatment plans, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of community mental health programs and services. Professional counselor ethics and multicultural competencies are emphasized. Moreover, advocacy, case management, and social and public policy skills acquisition are addressed.

Benefits

Upon graduation from the M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program, graduates are:

1. eligible to sit for the New York State MHC licensing examinations (CMHCE);
2. upon receipt of a "Limited Permit" Mental Health Counselor License, able to practice in clinical mental health counseling supervised settings;
3. eligible to pursue the 3,000 hours of supervised clinical mental health counseling experience licensure requirement, and
4. upon completion apply for a permanent New York Mental Health Counselor license.

Upon becoming licensed as a mental health counselor, one can engage in public or private practice, work as a clinician or clinical supervisor in community mental health programs, and in regional and state mental health services, and work as an agency or independent mental health consultant.

Program Requirements

This 60 semester credit M.S. degree includes clinical and specialty courses, as well as the counseling core curriculum. The program can be pursued on a full-time or part-time basis, up to the point of internship when a full-time commitment is generally required. A 900 hour internship in a Clinical Mental Health Counseling setting is required.

Program Pre-requisite Curricular Experiences

This program requires the applicant to have twelve undergraduate credits in psychology, human services, education, or closely related areas with specific course work in research, social and cultural foundations, human development across the life span, statistics, and computers. Each program applicant will be evaluated individually to determine which undergraduate course work may be credited toward these prerequisites.

Course Sequence

Upon acceptance into the clinical mental health counseling program, each student is assigned an advisor who guides the student in selecting courses to fit the student's program. Courses in the counseling programs are planned to give a balanced selection of academic and experiential education and to encourage each student to achieve maximum professional competence. Academic and professional development evaluations are made of all students each semester to ensure ongoing professional growth.

• View the M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling course curriculum. Note: this 479kB PDF file includes updates to the current college catalog and requires the latest version of Acrobat Reader, which is available as a free download.
• View clinical mental health counseling course descriptions.

Contact Information

For more information about the clinical mental health counseling program please contact

Dr. David Stone, Coordinator
Office: Ward Hall 104A
Phone: (518) 564-4178
Email: stoneda@plattsburgh.edu