Clinical Mental Health Counseling

We've built our curriculum around the expectations for licensure and the requirements for accreditation. We are focused on training you to become competent, caring, confident, and committed professionals.

Specializations

Play Therapy

One area of popular interest is how to foster the mental health and development of children and families. A great way to do that with children is through play therapy.

Play therapy is an empirically grounded therapeutic approach where clients use the natural medium of play and toys as tools to express themselves. As children's experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important vehicle for them to know and accept themselves and others.

We are proud to offer a specialization in play therapy, a nine-hour training track structured to enable students to gain knowledge, personal experience, and practical application of play therapy and expressive arts techniques. This specialization does not require additional hours for the master's degree in clinical mental health counseling.

Addictions

Learning about treating addiction through an addiction lens and a mental health lens creates a unique perspective and very marketable skills. Lipscomb is the only faith-based, CACREP accredited university in the south that offers this unique program.

Graduates of this track will complete the academic requirements to allow students to pursue two licenses in Tennessee: Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor (LADAC) and Licensed Professional Counselor with Mental Health Service Provider designation (LPC-MHSP). This unique perspective allows a counselors to simultaneously treat an addiction while also treating the underlying cause of the addiction. This program will provide you with coursework in theory, practice, and the treatment of addictions in addition to general counseling knowledge and skills, and will make you a highly marketable candidate in future employment endeavors. 

This specialization is provided in partnership with Cumberland Heights, a nationally recognized alcohol and drug treatment center located in Nashville, Tennessee. At Cumberland Heights, you will have the opportunity to choose from practicum experiences in the residential men's, women's, young men's, adolescent males' and family programs - as well as adult or adolescent intensive outpatient experiences. It is rare for a practicum site to be able to offer this range of choices.

With half a century of direct experience as one of the nation's top drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers, Cumberland Heights is perfectly positioned to help the next generation of licensed counselors and to assist with the instruction of Lipscomb University students who desire to pursue this important profession.

Behavioral Health Integration

Our clinical mental health counseling program has been awarded the largest grant in the university’s history — $1.8 million — to carry out an innovative approach to bringing mental health services straight to underserved populations in the location where they most often first get recognized — the patient’s doctor’s office.

The grant was awarded by the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which is the primary federal agency for improving health care for people who are geographically isolated and economically or medically vulnerable.

It funds a project proposed by Douglas Ribeiro, assistant professor of psychology, counseling and family science. “Improving Mental Health Services through Integrative Care Opportunities in Nashville, Tennessee” offers best practice training for health care professionals working on-site in medical offices and to place mental health counseling interns in those offices we well.

Such an approach addresses unmet mental health needs of medically underserved populations, particularly immigrant populations and residents whose primary language is not English. Lipscomb’s grant is part of the HRSA’s Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program, which develops and expands the behavioral health workforce. The program places special emphasis on establishing placements that include interdisciplinary training to provide quality behavioral health services to communities in need.

Students are required to complete one year of practicum and internship totaling 750 hours of supervised clinical experience; this experience helps the students develop their skills as counselors, preparing them for the counseling profession. Students may also choose to specialize in play therapy by taking two play therapy electives and one semester of internship in play therapy. Students also have the option of completing a thesis if they are considering a future doctorate degree.

Program Outcomes

Last academic year, there were 34 graduates of Lipscomb University’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling program. Our graduates consistently achieve high pass rates on licensing examinations. The pass rate for graduates taking the NCE examination in the 2017 – 2018 academic year was 100%. Of the admitted students, 56% graduate from the program in the expected time period (11 semesters) and 92% of those program graduates responding to surveys who are actively seeking jobs are employed.

For more information about accreditation, mission, goals and policies of the program, see our student handbook.