422 | What's Wrong with Our Field?: Universities and Graduate School

Episode summary

In this episode of the What's Wrong with Our Field? series, I tackle what I believe is one of the greatest shortcomings in graduate mental health education: the lack of meaningful preparation for working with children. I share why so many counseling, social work, psychology, and marriage and family therapy programs treat children as an afterthought, expose students to modified adult interventions instead of developmentally appropriate models, or fail to address pediatric therapy altogether. The result is that new therapists often graduate feeling completely unprepared when they're assigned their first child clients.

I also explain why this isn't just a training issue—it's an ethical one. As the demand for children's mental health services continues to grow, graduate programs have a responsibility to prepare clinicians to competently serve young clients. I encourage therapists to become advocates for change by engaging their universities, professors, and training programs in conversations about the need for play therapy—and specifically child-centered play therapy—to become a foundational part of graduate education.