Guides to Counseling Careers & Other Resources

Self-injury is when an individual deliberately harms themselves in a manner that is not intended to be lethal. It can also be referred to as self-harm, self-abuse, self-mutilation, or non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).

Deciding to become a mental health counselor is a huge step, but how do you pay for it? Cost varies depending on the type of school you’re attending, the type of degree you’re going for, and how long it takes to complete your academic journey.

“School counseling is 100-plus years old,” says Eric Sparks, EdD, Deputy Executive Director for ASCA. “Starting as vocation guidance in the early 1900s, school counseling has shifted from a job position to a service and finally to an organized K-12 schoolwide program that improves outcomes for all students.”

More than 39 million adults with a substance use disorder did not receive treatment in 2024, according to the latest data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. More than 95 percent of those not receiving treatment didn’t believe they needed help—but for 1.5 million adults who thought they did, barriers to treatment left them unwilling or unable to get support.

Factors as diverse as diet, stress, and drug use can produce epigenetic change. Epigenetics helps us understand how nature and nurture can interact to produce an outcome, including whether a person develops a psychological disorder.

Somatic therapy focuses on the client’s physical experience by identifying how their body stores and releases stress. For many, this approach is quite intuitive, yet some anxious clients may initially struggle. Stressed out, over-caffeinated, and bouncing between past regrets and existential crises, they may have spent many years bypassing the discomfort in their bodies, doing mental gymnastics to stay cerebral.

Counselors who are new in the profession may take therapeutic failure personally when it may reflect other relationship dynamics. Therapy does not work for many reasons, including a mismatch in personality, client readiness for treatment, financial issues, or cultural misunderstandings.

Over the past few years, teens have experienced an alarming increase in mental illness in the U.S. The 2010s, in particular, marked a decade of declining mental health capped off by the disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. By 2024, national survey data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that around one in every five adolescents suffered from a major depressive episode in the previous year, continuing an upward trend in depression that began around 2013.

The root Latin manipulus means handful, as in a skillful handling of objects. A juggler, a card shuffler, and a bored student spinning their pencil in class are all manipulating objects. Applying this skillful handling to people, it’s no wonder we feel played with when we’re socially manipulated or powerful when we can manipulate others. In fact, the American Psychological Association defines manipulation as a “behavior designed to exploit, control, or otherwise influence others to one’s advantage.”

Two benefits programs that may be available to individuals with disabilities—including those caused by mental health conditions—are Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).