TPC-Journal-V2-Issue1

58 Addiction Counseling Licensure Issues for Licensed Professional Counselors Keith Morgen Geri Miller LoriAnn S. Stretch This article addresses the obstacles of effectively integrating addiction counseling into a nationwide definition of professional counseling scope of practice. The article covers an overview of issues, specific licensure and credentialing frameworks (LPC, CADC, LCADC) in two U.S. states, and recommendations to effectively bridge the gap between professional and addiction counseling. Historical origins and an overview of addiction counseling are presented. Keywords: addiction, licensure, credentialing, LPC, CADC, LCADC The Professional Counselor Volume 2, Issue 1 |Pages 58–65 © 2012 NBCC and Affiliates www.nbcc.org http://tpcjournal.nbcc.org doi:10.15241/kmm.2.1.58 The question of professional identity within the counseling profession, first considered during the founding of the American Personnel and Guidance Association (Sweeney, 1995), still exists today (Calley & Hawley, 2008; Cashwell, Kleist, & Schofield, 2009; Mellin, Hunt, & Nichols, 2011; Myers, Sweeney, & White, 2002; Nassar-McMillan & Niles, 2011; Remley & Herlihy, 2009). One possible reason for the continual debate around professional identity may lie in the multitude of specialty fields (e.g., addiction, career, and school) within counseling (Gale & Austin, 2003; Myers, 1995; O’Brien, 2010). Remley (1995) underscores that unlike psychology, psychiatry and social work, counseling is the only mental health profession that licenses specialty areas. Specialty areas such as career and school counseling only denote a practice area or population; whereas addiction counseling actually entails a DSM-IV-TR Axis I disorder (i.e., Substance Use Disorders; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). No other Axis I or Axis II disorder receives such attention. Addiction is considered a part of professional counseling as implied by the latest CACREP standards (2009). However, a separate licensure track exists for the profession of addiction counseling. If the practice of addiction counseling really is a part of counseling (as implied by the latest 2009 CACREP standards), then the time has come to recalibrate the rest of the counseling profession to better fit an inclusive and unifying professional counseling identity that includes addiction counseling . Thus, the purpose of this paper is to start the dialogue regarding the mixed messages on the issue of counselor identity and specialization for addiction counseling (Morgen, Miller, Culbreth, & Juhnke, 2011; Tabor, Camisa, Yu, & Doncheski, 2011). The article is divided into an overview of issues, specific licensure and credentialing frameworks in two sample states (New Jersey and North Carolina), and recommendations in response to the concerns discussed. Overview of Issues Henriksen, Nelson, and Watts (2010) criticize the counseling specialty system by arguing that counseling specialties do not define counseling but merely denote a practice area, and that counseling specialty licensure/credentialing implies that only a small proportion of the counseling profession is qualified to work with this population. The addiction area is one such area of specialization that comes with a separate licensure/credentialing process. The authors believe that in regard to addiction counseling, the additional supervisory and training hours required for addiction licensure/credentialing (in addition to the supervisory and training hours required for licensure as a professional counselor) implies that addiction Keith Morgen, NCC, teaches at Centenary College, Geri Miller teaches at Appalachian State University and LoriAnn S. Stretch teaches at Walden University. The authors thank Anna Misenheimer, Executive Director of the North Carolina Substance Abuse Professional Practice Board, for serving as a reader of the early drafts of this paper. Her feedback was critical in our sharpening the preliminary focus of the paper. Correspondence can be addressed to Keith Morgen, Centenary College, 400 Jefferson Street, Box 403, Hackettstown, New Jersey, 07840, morgenk@centenarycollege.edu.