TPC Journal-Vol 11-Issue-1

88 The Professional Counselor | Volume 11, Issue 1 Currently, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP; 2015) does not specify rurality or other cultural identities when referencing cultural competence within required curriculum. This omission may contribute to minimal specialized training, in addition to the limited research for mental health counselors to use as a guide for understanding the unique needs of rural women (Watson, 2019). Additionally, agencies have difficulty recruiting mental health counselors because of isolation from colleagues and supervisors, lower salaries, limited social and cultural opportunities, and few training opportunities specific to rural mental health (Fifield & Oliver, 2016). Addressing Mental Health Needs of Rural Women Given the limited research about rural women and their unique mental health needs, rural counselors are left with few evidence-based practices to utilize when working with this population (Imig, 2014). Historically, counseling researchers have equated “mentally healthy adults” with “mentally healthy adult males,” resulting in literature that is focused on best practices more appropriate for men (Broverman et al., 1970), and potentially upholding sex-role stereotypes within the fields of psychology, social work, medicine, and mental health counseling (APA, 2018; Schwarz, 2017). More recent researchers have demonstrated the efficacy of gender-specific counseling approaches (Enns, 2017). However, the approaches often do not consider the additional barriers to services that rural women may face, such as long distances to services, limited availability of mental health professionals, and the stigma of seeking services in a rural area (Hill et al., 2016). In this transcendental phenomenological study, we sought to explore the lived experiences of licensed professional counselors (LPCs) who work with rural women in terms of their perceptions of rural Midwestern women’s mental health, and the academic training they received to prepare them for working with rural women. The study sought to answer the following research questions: (a) What are the lived experiences of LPCs who work with rural women?; (b) What are the challenges and benefits of working with rural women?; (c) How are mental health services perceived by those working with rural women?; and (d) What training, if any, did the participants receive that was specific to work with rural women? Method Qualitative research, by its very nature, validates individuals who may be disempowered (Morrow, 2007; Ponterotto, 2010). Phenomenology is a qualitative method that helps researchers describe the common meaning of participants’ lived experiences specific to a particular phenomenon (Creswell & Poth, 2018). In this study, the phenomenon was the lived experiences of LPCs who worked with rural women. Transcendental phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994) provided a framework for the study that began with epoché , a process of bracketing the researchers’ experiences and biases, and the collection of participant stories (Creswell & Poth, 2018). For this study, postpositivist elements of transcendental phenomenology (e.g., bracketing and data analysis) were utilized to reduce researcher biases (Moustakas, 1994). Specifically, we viewed bracketing as essential because participants might not share the feminist viewpoint of the researchers. The infusion of feminism into the study came from a constructivist/interpretivist standpoint as I (i.e., first author and lead researcher) believed—based on literature—the stories of rural women were not being heard and, thus, designed the study to help illuminate the experiences, mental health needs, and resiliency of rural women (Morrow, 2007). Participants For this study, participants were recruited using criterion and snowball sampling. Criterion sampling involved selecting individuals on the basis of their shared experiences and their abilities to articulate