Are professional counsellors and psychotherapists prepared to make a greater contribution to the Australian mental health workforce? A comparison of training content and mental health standards

ABSTRACT

Objective

Professional counsellors and psychotherapists present a potential workforce to contribute to the alleviation of Australia’s mental health crisis. However, a major hurdle for the endorsement of these professions to received public health rebates has been the question whether their training programs meet required standards.

Method

This discussion paper presents a synthesis of the mental health practice standards of cognate professions receiving rebates for focussed psychological strategies (counselling psychology, mental health accredited social workers, mental health occupational therapy). Secondly, this paper presents a desk review of accredited counselling and psychotherapy training courses and compares these programs with these standards.

Results

The comparison showed that current content of counselling and psychotherapy training is preparing graduates for practice that is consistent with many mental health standards, including: competence in working with mental health conditions; attending to quality improvement; awareness and responsiveness to diversity; and, working within a client-centred and recovery focused framework. The level of preparation for two standards (knowing and complying with mental health systems and standards; enhancing care through collaboration, service integration and teamwork) is less clear.

Discussion

These results suggest that according to several indicators, counsellor and psychotherapist training already prepares professionals to work according to current standards. For other standards, recommendations for updates to training programs and credentialling pathways are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Counselling; psychotherapy; training; mental health; professional recognition

As both personal and social issues have increased in intensity and complexity around the world, the need for counselling and therapeutic services has rapidly expanded (Amundson et al., 2015). One outcome of this evolution of the mental health industry has been that services described by the generic terms of ‘counselling’ and ‘psychotherapy’ have been provided by a range of professions, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, pastors, human service workers and even untrained individuals (Amundson et al., 2015; Beel et al., 2022). Within this context there are also the distinct professions of counselling and psychotherapy, with their own training standards, accreditation and professional identity (viz. as counsellors or psychotherapists). However, across the global context, the professions of counselling and psychotherapy have historically struggled to achieve recognition and legitimacy as providers of mental health strategies and therapies when compared to other professions providing those same services (Reiner et al., 2013).

This paper will introduce and explore these dynamics within the specific example of the Australian mental health system, where professional counsellors and psychotherapists are not currently recognised (through Medicare rebates) for the provision of focussed psychological strategies. Firstly, it will be shown that research, professional practice, and growing recognition from government and industry all point to the potential of leveraging the counselling workforce more effectively in the challenge to meet increasing demand for mental health services. Secondly, an examination of cognate professions’ mental health standards and a comparison between those standards and the content of counselling and psychotherapy training programs will be presented to identify the ways in which counselling and psychotherapy training programs align with mental health standards, and where gaps remain. Finally, adaptations to existing counselling and psychotherapy training programs and credentialling pathways will be proposed as a contribution to the ongoing discussion about how to progress towards the recognition of appropriately credentialled counsellors and psychotherapists as mental health practitioners, as defined by the Australian mental health system.

Counsellors, psychotherapists and mental health: the Australian context

Australia is a country with increasing mental health needs. The results from the 2022 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report on the prevalence and impact of mental health in Australia indicated that 43.7% of Australians experienced a mental disorder in their lifetime, and 21.4% of Australians had symptoms in the previous 12 months. Of those with symptoms, anxiety disorders were the most common, followed by affective and substance use disorders (AIHWa, 2022a). It is evident that, whilst demand for mental health services has been steadily increasing in recent times, this demand increased exponentially at the beginning of the pandemic, as measured by the number of Mental Health Care plans developed by general practitioners (Lyons, 2021), the demand for psychologists and other mental health workers (AIHWb, 2022b), and the number of calls to support services, such as Lifeline (Lifeline, 2021). With demand for mental health services increasing, it is imperative that access to those services is prioritised. Research has demonstrated that two of the biggest barriers to accessing mental health services are wait times and financial cost (Iskra et al., 2018; Mulraney et al., 2021), both of which can be addressed through increasing the number of mental health practitioners who can offer affordable services.

The largest initiative in Australia to increase accessibility to mental health services is the Better Access initiative. The initiative works through the provision of Medicare rebates for specific interventions provided by approved practitioners to eligible consumers with diagnosed mental disorders. The range of these services is limited by two major factors. Firstly, rebates are only for two types of interventions, namely ‘Psychological Therapies’ and ‘Focussed Psychological Strategies’. Secondly, the provision of services is restricted to a limited range of professions, namely medical professionals (e.g. general practitioners, psychiatrists), clinical psychologists (the only professionals who can deliver ‘Psychological Therapies’), registered psychologists, occupational therapists and social workers (Services Australia, 2023).

In the global context, the Australian system represents only one way to structure public mental health care. In contrast to the Australian system where the provider bills the government for their services, the system in the United Kingdom is built around the government commissioning and funding institutions or groups of practitioners, who then provide services to the public. In Canada, the recommended model combines elements of both the Australian and UK systems (Mental Health Commission of Canada, 2021). In these recommendations, psychotherapists and counselling therapists (along with psychologists and social workers) are identified as providers of psychotherapy that should be eligible for greater public funding, while in the UK, appropriately qualified members of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy are included in the mental health workforce (National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, 2024).

The professional accreditation bodies of the counselling and psychotherapy profession in Australia, namely, Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), the Australian Counselling Association (ACA), and the Australian Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (ARCAP) have identified counsellors and psychotherapists as an underutilised resource within the mental health sector of Australia (Australian Counselling Association, 2021a; Australian Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, 2019; Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, 2020, 2021). Counsellors and psychotherapists are not currently able to access Medicare rebates for the provision of their services, even though those who are registered with those professional accreditation bodies adhere to standards of training, practice, supervision and ongoing professional development equivalent to those of other mental health professionals. As such, these professional bodies have submitted proposals to include qualified and experienced counsellors and psychotherapists amongst the professions that provide focussed psychological strategies (ARCAP, 2020).

Whilst counsellors and psychotherapists have not yet been successful in accessing rebates for providing focussed psychological strategies via the Better Access initiative, considerations from research, practice and governmental recognition suggest there are three major arguments why this should continue to be explored. Firstly, counsellors and psychotherapists are represented in the literature on focussed psychological strategies, showing that these professions are part of the evidence-base that informs the current system (Schirmer et al., 2021). This evidence base shows that the therapist’s professional background (psychologist, counsellor, social worker, etc.) is an irrelevant variable in predicting therapeutic outcomes (Wampold & Owen, 2021), which suggests that differentiating counsellors and psychotherapists from other mental health practitioners on the basis of effectiveness is inconsistent with research findings.

Secondly, the inclusion of counsellors and psychotherapists is supported by current mental health practice in Australia. These professions already provide focussed psychological strategies in many contexts and have been recognised as suitably qualified practitioners to attract private health fund rebates and to provide employee assistance programs (EAPs). Furthermore, in evaluating the performance of EAP support, counsellors and psychotherapists performed favourably, with the report concluding that ‘counsellors performed better than psychologists with fewer complaints, better rapport building and in understanding and helping with the issue’ (Page, 2020, p 13).

Finally, the potential inclusion of counsellors/psychotherapists is supported by increasing governmental recognition. In the final report of the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Select Committee of the Australian Parliament, it was noted that counsellors and psychotherapists ‘have the potential to provide a larger contribution to the mental health and suicide prevention workforce’ (House of Representatives Select Committee on Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, 2021, p. 158). In a review into improving mental health outcomes, the Queensland Government recognised ‘the potential value of employing counsellors with appropriate training, qualifications and experience in suitable roles’, and recommended investigating ‘how to leverage the counselling workforce’ (Queensland Government, 2022, p. 42). In Victoria, this recognition has been formalised through parliament legislating for Registered Counsellors to be included under the definition of a Mental Health Practitioner (Victorian Legislation, 2022). The recognition of the profession also has broad public support, with a recent change.org petition being signed by over 32,000 signatories in favour of increasing access to mental health services by including counsellors and psychotherapists as Medicare-approved providers (change.org, 2023).

With research, practice and recognition pointing in the direction of counsellor and psychotherapist inclusion in the Better Access system, a remaining question for policymakers and the industry centres upon the standards and practice of training for these professionals. Appropriately, if the professions of counselling and psychotherapy are to contribute to the Better Access scheme, there is a necessity for these professions to demonstrate that their training requirements and practices align with the standards expected of mental health professions.

To this end, the 2021 Select Committee report recommended ‘that the Australian Government review the existing self-regulated standards being used by the counsellor and psychotherapist peak bodies and use the results to determine appropriate terminology, national minimum standards for education, supervision, continuing professional development and oversight requirements’ (Select Committee into Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, 2021, p. xxviii). This recommendation has led to the establishment of a process to develop a single national training standard for counsellors and psychotherapists in Australia (Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, 2023).

Consequently, an opportunity exists to review how current accredited training prepares graduates of counselling and psychotherapy programs for practice in Australia’s mental health system. Such an investigation is necessary to facilitate the identification of how well these training programs already align with mental health training standards, as well as potential areas of expansion or improvement. In this context, the purpose of this discussion paper is to contribute to the conversation by comparing mental health standards with current training content of counselling and psychotherapy training.

Method

Research aims, questions and approach

The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary evaluation of how the current content of psychotherapy and counselling training compares to standards for mental health practice in Australia. Such an investigation has the potential to provide a baseline understanding of the strengths and limitations of the current content of training, which in turn informs the emerging national standards for these professions. This information is valuable to assess the readiness of the professions of counselling and psychotherapy to contribute to the Australian mental health workforce.

To this end, this paper was driven by three informing questions:

1. What are the common features in standards of practice for mental health professions currently providing focused psychological strategies?

2. What subject areas currently comprise accredited training programs in counselling and psychotherapy?

3. How well does the content of counselling and psychotherapy training compare to the common features of mental health practice standards?

To inform the discussion in this paper, the authors conducted a desk review of two sources: (a) mental health standards for cognate mental health professions, and (b) program structures for those accredited tertiary program in counselling and psychotherapy that would potentially be eligible for Better Access rebates. These two sources were then compared for points of alignment and variance, in order to inform the discussion about the future of counselling and psychotherapy training standards.

Question 1 method: common features of mental health standards

For the first step of the review, the authors identified cognate professions to counselling psychotherapy. For the purpose of this study, these professions were those that already received the same level of Better Access rebates to which counsellors and psychotherapists aspire (i.e. to deliver focussed psychological strategies), namely Occupational Therapy, Social Work, and Counselling Psychology. The authors then sourced the official practice standards for these professions.

Mental health standards considered were the Mental Health Occupational Therapy Capability Framework (Occupational Therapy Australia, 2023), the Practice Standards for Mental Health Social Workers (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2014), and the Accreditation Standards for Psychology Programs (specifically those relating to Counselling Psychology) (Australian Psychology Accreditation Council, 2019). To complement the profession-specific standards, the generic National Practice Standards for the Mental Health Workforce (State of Victoria, Department of Health, 2013) were also included.

These four sets of standards were analysed to determine their common features using a constant comparison approach (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005). The components of the standards were extracted and tabulated. The components were initially displayed according to each individual standard. The components were then compared, and where components covered similar content, they were grouped together and given a heading that represented the theme that was present in the group. This process was repeated until a minimum number of themes were identified that covered the common components of the standards.

Question 2 method: subject areas in counsellor/psychotherapist training

To answer this question, the authors first identified the tertiary programs accredited by at least one of the peak bodies for counsellors and psychotherapists (ACA or PACFA). As mental health rebates would only apply to particular categories of memberships (Level 3 and 4 for ACA, Clinical Membership for PACFA), only those degrees that would lead to these levels of membership were included (i.e. bachelor- and masters-level degrees). These accredited programs are publicly listed on the websites of the peak bodies. Once the full list of training programs was compiled, the subject list of each program was obtained from the relevant training institution’s website.¹

The subject areas of the training programs were again analysed using a constant comparison approach (Whittemore & Knafl, 2005). The titles of the subjects that comprised each program were listed. In order to enable comparison, each subject was coded in the form of a short summary word or phrase (e.g. a subject that might be called ‘Understanding and Responding to Grief and Loss in Counselling’ would be coded as ‘Grief and Loss’).

These summaries were then compared and grouped into categories. These categories denoted major subject areas found in the training (e.g. skills; theories). These subject areas were then analysed for the regularity that they were included in the degrees, highlighting the prevalence of the various subject areas in training (i.e. whether it was a core, common or occasional subject area, reported below).

Question 3 method: comparison of training content and mental health standards

To address this final question, the results of the first two questions were put into direct comparison to identify points of alignment and variance. Training content was deemed to be in alignment with mental health standards if there were subject areas that could be reasonably adjudicated to directly address specific standards. Conversely, if there were no subject areas that could be identified that would directly address the standards, then the training content was deemed to be limited or uncertain.

Findings

Synthesis of mental health standards

Six themes stood out as being consistent across the four mental health standards reviewed.

Firstly, mental health professionals are expected to know and comply with mental health systems and standards. This includes a familiarity with policy, legal frameworks, codes, policies and procedures. However, it also represents a commitment to the rights of consumers and conduct consistent with the professional practice standards. Finally, this standard requires an awareness of the operation of the mental health system.

Secondly, the standards require that professionals work from a client-centred and recovery focused framework. This standard represents the values base of the mental health professions. It insists on a priority of client-centred care, highlighting the lived experience, autonomy and input of clients, their families and their carers. Equally, the standards emphasise a recovery-oriented framework, which shapes the goals of practice.

Thirdly, mental health professionals in Australia are required to show awareness and responsiveness to diversity. The standards require practitioners to respect and account for variables such as culture, life-stage, gender, language and other social diversity in the way that they conceptualise, communicate and intervene, in order to remove barriers to care and maximise outcomes. The standards make particular note of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Nations of Australia.

Fourth, the standards require competence in assessment, planning and treating mental health conditions. Given the centrality of these practice competencies to quality care, many of the standards cover these underneath multiple headings focusing on assessment, care planning and intervention. Still, the common emphasis is that practitioners’ knowledge and skills are current, comprehensive, based on the best available evidence and suited to the needs and goals of clients.

Fifth, the standards commonly require mental health practitioners to be competent in enhancing care through collaboration, service integration and teamwork. This standard requires practitioners to see themselves as part of a team and a system. It emphasises quality coordination, collaboration and communication to enhance care, particular in transitions and interactions between various parts of the system.

Finally, the standards emphasise that professionals attend to quality improvement as a professional and a service. This includes professionals attending to their own improvement through supervision, consultation and professional development. However, it also extends to continuous improvement of services through processes such as regular feedback, monitoring, critical reflection and systematic review.

For the purposes of this paper these represent the minimum standards for professionals practising in the mental health workforce.

Summary of counselling training courses

The review of accredited training programs in counselling and psychotherapy revealed three categories of subject matter. The first category comprised units that were ubiquitous across the training programs, which here have been designated core subjects. The second category is common subjects, which are units that are not universal, but which are included in the majority of programs. The final category are occasional subjects, which occur in some training programs but not in others. These are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Prevalence of subject areas in accredited counselling and psychotherapy programs.

Category	Subject Area	Prevalence
Core Subject	Skills and processes of counselling practice	100% mandatory
	Recognised theories and therapies	100% mandatory
	Professional practice experience (internship, practicum or field placement)	95.35% mandatory / 2.33% elective
	Ethics and professional practice	86.05% mandatory / 0% elective
	Knowledge and application of mental health	83.72% mandatory / 4.65% elective
Common Subjects	Research (methods, skills or projects)	74.42% mandatory / 4.65% elective
	Group work skills and processes	62.79% mandatory / 0% elective
	Lifespan development	60.47% mandatory / 2.33% elective
	Understanding and working across diversity	60.47% mandatory / 4.65% elective
Occasional Subjects	Working with children and adolescents	37.32% mandatory / 30.23% elective
	Working with families and/or relationships	41.86% mandatory / 20.93% elective
	Grief and loss	51.16% mandatory / 9.3% elective
	Trauma	46.51% mandatory / 11.63% elective

Note. 43 programs reviewed.

This paper will not report on idiosyncratic units that occur in a small number of training programs, as this does not give meaningful information about the general training of counsellors and psychotherapists.

There were five subject areas that appeared repeatedly across accredited counselling and psychotherapy training programs. These were: (a) skills and processes of counselling practice; (b) recognised theories and therapies; (c) knowledge and application of mental health; (d) professional practice experience (in the form of internship or field placement); and (e) ethics and professional practice. Each of these subject areas were represented by a stand-alone subject in all (or nearly all) degrees in counselling and psychotherapy. As such, these subject areas represent the core knowledge, skills and experience that can be expected from any graduate of an accredited counselling and psychotherapy training program.

Further to the core units, the review of training programs also revealed a series of common subjects that appeared in the majority of programs. The subject areas of these common units were: (a) research (methods, skills and projects); (b) group work skills and processes; (c) lifespan development; and (d) understanding and working across diversity. As demonstrated in Table 1, a stand-alone subject in these areas featured in a high proportion of training programs. It is also reasonable that some of this subject matter is implicitly covered in some other subjects (e.g. life span development in subjects on working with children and adolescents).

Finally, the review showed a series of occasional units which, although a regular inclusion in programs, were not an essential part of training. These occasional subject areas were: (a) working with children and adolescents; (b) working with families and/or relationships; (c) grief and loss; and (d) trauma. These subject areas appeared as stand-alone subjects in many counselling and psychotherapy training programs, albeit with a higher rate of being elective subjects. This likely represents the particular interests, specialisations or applications of the various programs. As such, the likelihood that counsellors or psychotherapists have been trained in these areas will depend upon the program they have completed.

Comparison of training content with mental health standards

The question that is presented is: how prepared are graduates of accredited counsellor and psychotherapy training programs to meet the standards of professions that are already eligible for public mental health rebates?

The review of the accredited programs showed that counselling and psychotherapy graduates who would be eligible for mental health rebates are thoroughly trained and assessed in skills, theories and therapies needed to conduct counselling and psychotherapy, and have experienced these in the realities of professional practice. Furthermore, most graduates have completed a stand-alone subject in the area of mental health practice. Consequently, it would be reasonable to consider that graduates would be well prepared to meet the required standard of competence in assessment, planning and treating mental health conditions.

The review also demonstrated that the majority of training programs in counselling and psychotherapy included in this review contain dedicated units on the subjects of research, working across diversity, group work, and life span development. This constellation of subject matter puts graduates in a good position to meet the standards of attending to quality improvement as a professional and a service, and awareness and responsiveness to diversity.

From examining the core units in counselling and psychotherapy training programs, it is uncertain how well graduates are prepared to meet the standards of knowing and complying with mental health systems and standards, and enhancing care through collaboration, service integration and teamwork. On one hand, very few (if any) of the programs had stand-alone units on these particular topics. In contrast, the common inclusion of subjects such as ethics and professional practice would likely introduce students to the professional standards needed for practice. Other common subjects (e.g. group work) may develop transferrable skills (e.g. teamwork) that would be relevant to these standards.

Furthermore, it is possible that these particular standards are more thoroughly developed in professional practice experience in internships or field placements. These experiences regularly require trainees to know and comply with policies, procedures and standards of their setting, understand contexts and systems influencing their work, work within a team, and collaborate with other professionals and services in care of their clients. Furthermore, accreditation bodies outline standards for both the quantity and content of professional practice experience in training. By extension, even if training does not provide all possible experiences, these competencies (standards compliance and collaborative care) are ones that practising professionals are likely to develop out of necessity in their work in the field.

The remaining mental health standard requires practitioners to work from a client-centred and recovery focused framework. Again, this is a standard that is not correlated with a stand-alone unit in counselling training. Still, this standard represents more of a values-base and an orientation of aspirations than a discrete subject area, and consequently would be material that pervades all teaching and learning of the profession.

The principle of client-centredness and goals consistent with recovery (e.g. wellbeing, wellness, etc.) are central to the ethos and practice of the professions of counselling and psychotherapy. This is reflected in key documents such as training standards (e.g. Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, 2022), codes of ethics (e.g. Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, 2017), and scopes of practice (e.g. Australian Counselling Association, 2021b). For example, the PACFA Training Standards (2022), include the dictum that ‘Training … facilitates the opportunity for clients to experience self-reflective understanding and self-determined change’ as one of the ‘principles [that] apply to all course/programs accredited by PACFA’ (p 6). As such, it is reasonable to think that training in counselling and psychotherapy would introduce trainees to work in client-centred and recovery-focused ways throughout their education.

Discussion

This comparison of course content in accredited training for counsellors and psychotherapists showed that graduates of these professions have direct training that would prepare them for mental health standards such as (a) competence in assessment, planning and treating mental health conditions, (b) attending to quality improvement as a professional and a service, and (c) awareness and responsiveness to diversity. Furthermore, given the ethos and core content of these professions it would also be reasonable to consider that counsellors and psychotherapists have likely been prepared to work from a client-centred and recovery-focused framework. From this review alone, it was unclear whether counselling and psychotherapy training programs prepared for standards such as knowing and complying with mental health systems and standards, and enhancing care through collaboration, service integration and teamwork.

Given these findings, this paper proposes two possible conclusions. Firstly, consistent with the earlier discussion that counsellors and psychotherapists are already acknowledged in research and current practice as providing focused psychological strategies, this review of training in the Australian context has shown that these professionals are also clearly trained in many of the standards needed to practice in this area. Thus, this review supports the validity of the ongoing conversation regarding expanding the contribution of these professions in the Australian mental health workforce.

Secondly, while this review has found that some standards are not addressed in stand-alone subjects in counselling and psychotherapy degrees, this in itself is not evidence that these standards are not being learned by counsellors/psychotherapists. In this way, the findings are consistent with the common research dictum that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. As such, the problem that faces the professions of counselling/psychotherapy may not be that there is a gap in their training, but rather that there is a gap in demonstrating the training outcomes meet the mental health standards. If so, the task ahead of the profession is not necessarily one of addition, but rather one of demonstration.

There would be two primary ways that the profession could embark upon demonstrating how trained counsellors work to the same mental health standards as cognate professions. The first pathway would be to formalise these standards in the accreditation of counselling and psychotherapy degrees. The development of a singular national training standard for this profession presents a unique opportunity to embed these standards as core standards that training providers must meet. Training providers would then be beholden to demonstrate these standards explicitly, and both the public and policy makers could be assured that these standards have been met by all subsequent graduates of counselling and psychotherapy training.

A second way for the counselling/psychotherapy profession to demonstrate that its members meet the mental health standards would be to create a pathway for existing practitioners to verify that they have met these standards through their training and experience. As many of the standards are likely to be met in practice, a process of demonstrating experience and outcomes against those standards could assure the public and policy makers of these practitioners’ practice.

This approach has precedent in professions such as social work, which uses a certifying process for members to be credentialed as an ‘Accredited Mental Health Social Worker’. This process requires applicants to demonstrate that their skills and experience meet the mental health standards of the profession and the government, and thus gain the capability to receive public health rebates. The counselling/psychotherapy profession could adopt a similar system as a way of certifying that members wanting to practice under the Better Access scheme can demonstrate standards that are not evident from their training alone.

Alongside these pathways of demonstrating that counsellors/psychotherapists indeed meet mental health practice standards, the profession could also consider the addition of new credentials that specialise in mental health practice and the delivery of focussed psychological strategies. The programs reviewed in these studies were the qualifying programs for entry into the profession, which have the focus of training professionals for all core aspects of professional practice. There is scope, however, to also add advanced training that qualifies practitioners for areas of specialisation (e.g. mental health and the delivery of focused psychological strategies). The addition of such qualifications would provide practitioners with another pathway to demonstrate their consistency with mental health standards.

Conclusion

As a discussion paper, this project acknowledges some limitations which impact how conclusive any analysis can be. The analysis of training content was at the level of stand-alone subjects within the program. A review at the level of unit learning outcomes would reveal a more nuanced understanding of content, including some content that may have been missed in the analysis. Also, the analysis did not compare counselling and psychotherapy training programs with the training programs of other cognate professions. Such an analysis would further reveal points of strength and limitation of the counselling/psychotherapy training compared to other professions that qualify for mental health rebates.

While acknowledging these limitations, the purpose of this paper was to provide a beginning analysis of the current training content of the counselling/psychotherapy profession in Australia and compare this to the mental health practice standards of cognate professions. The primary conclusion proposed by this paper is that counselling/psychotherapy can already demonstrate how it prepares graduates for practice that is consistent with many of the standards. For those standards that are less certain, a number of proposed pathways could feasibly demonstrate consistency with the standards through formalisation in training standards and other credentialing pathways.

These findings can inform both the profession and policy makers as counselling/psychotherapy moves towards a singular training standard. Given the ongoing high mental health needs of the community, such action taken in this area has the potential to provide a pathway to add a trained workforce, increasing accessibility to high-quality mental health care.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As different training providers use different terminology, for the sake of clarity this paper will use the term ‘program’ to cover the degree or full course of study, and the term ‘subject’ to cover individual units or courses within that program.