04/06/2024
A young woman called me asking about services, and mentioned she was in Augusta. I told her I could answer her questions while she was there, but if for us to actually work together she would either have to drive to Columbia, or at least drive across the river and talk with me from her car on the South Carolina side.
¶ “That’s crazy,” she said.
¶ I agreed. Our license system is a relic of the 18th Century, when everything moved at the speed of a horse, and it makes no sense today. The Counseling Compact is up for a final vote in the SC legislature after April 10, and it needs to pass. It allows mental health counselors to pay a small fee and work with our clients when they are in other Compact states. So if my college student client goes out of state, I can still work with him, or if a client has a crisis on vacation I can help her. Or the woman in Augusta could work with me virtually from her apartment.
⭐️ Please contact your SC state senator and representative and ask them to vote to pass the Counseling Compact. If you don’t know how, it is super easy to look them up and click to send a quick email. Just click the link in the comments.
¶ If you want more information on the Counseling Compact, I’ll put another link for that in the comments.
¶ BTW the social workers have a similar compact bill up right now too, and theirs needs to pass also, if you want to mention that as well.
¶ South Carolina has a shortage of mental health professionals. The budget impact of this bill is negligible (officially estimated at maybe $50,000 if the license board needs to hire an additional staff person to handle this (and that does not take into account fees we would receive from counselors in other states working with people here). And this really is not a party political issue. The Compact did not pass last year, and if it fails this year the entire legislative process will have to start completely over again.
¶ You don’t have to be a mental health professional to support these bills. They will just help a lot of people if they pass – maybe you in the future. And please feel free to share this.
¶ The young woman is driving to Columbia from Augusta for therapy, and getting better. And it is crazy that she has to do that.
Emotion drives behavior, and hypnosis is a powerful technique for emotional change.
