What Does Grace’s Online Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program Teach You?

By Anna Rosebrook (M.B.A. 26)

If you’re considering an online clinical mental health counseling program, you probably have more questions than “What classes will I take?” You want to know how to become a licensed professional counselor and what it actually feels like to counsel real clients. 

Joshua Davies had all of those questions too. He’s a current student in Grace’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program and a care coordinator at a community mental health center in Decatur, Illinois, where he is completing both his practicum and internship. 

Before students ever meet with a client in their practicum or internship, they spend months learning how to become a licensed professional counselor, building the foundational skills every counselor needs.

Where Every Counselor Starts

Every student in Grace’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program takes a 16-week course called Counseling Skills. It’s not what most people would expect from an online course.

“The first eight weeks are typically learning to listen very well,” Davies said. “And then the second eight weeks are devoted to learning to be more direct with our questions to get to the root of the issue.”

But how is this learned in an online format? Students train in triads, groups of three that rotate weekly between roles as the counselor, client, and observer. They record their sessions while practicing these skills and submit them for feedback.

“It takes a lot of practice,” he said. “But the practice and feedback that we get is invaluable; you learn so much in such a short time.”

By the time students reach their practicum, that repetition has built an instinct to sit with someone, meet with them, and listen to them without rushing to fix their problems.

Learning to Build a Plan With a Client

Once students have developed foundational listening skills, they continue their training in mental health assessments, diagnosis, and treatment planning.

Davies didn’t pretend this part was easy: “It’s very overwhelming at first,” he admitted.

Still, Grace equipped him with the knowledge and skills to do it effectively. “I’ve gained that base understanding from what I’ve learned, and I’m able to apply it in any setting I find myself in,” said Davies.

There’s one aspect that stood out to Davies. “It’s really about involving clients in the process,” he said. “It’s not about what we think they need to achieve, even though we may see the underlying issue and solution. Without the client’s buy-in and shared goals, they’re not going to want to do it.”

Skills for Real Counseling

Grace’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program prepares students in foundational counseling skills and practice, then lets them choose a therapeutic approach for in-depth training. Davies mentions two specific therapeutic modalities he focused on in his training, as well as how to assist in a crisis.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): CBT is a form of therapy that teaches people to identify and change unhelpful patterns in their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In practice, CBT interrupts one link in the chain between thought, emotion, and behavior to produce a different outcome. 

For example, Davies had been replacing a sump pump at home when a part didn’t fit. “In my mind, instantly, I was like, ‘Idiot, you should have known this,’” he said. That thought fed the belief that he is incompetent, which led him to give up and call someone else instead.

“If I stop that initial thought, buying the incorrect part still happens, but I can change that thought. I can have a different outcome that just changes the chain and affects everything.”

Narrative Theory: Davies’ personal favorite theory is narrative therapy, and the goal is to separate people from their problems and encourage them to rewrite their personal life stories.

“We’re helping to deconstruct narratives that have been shaped by culture, language, and experiences, and we help the clients rewrite those narratives in a way that feeds into their strengths,” said Davies.

Crisis Moments: Somewhere in every counseling student’s training, theory meets an actual emergency. For Davies, a minor experience happened during practicum, when an underage client mentioned having a gun.

“I didn’t know what to do with that,” he said. So, he followed the program training for these moments: he asked for help. He brought it to his site supervisor and to his faculty supervisor in class.

The layered support of advisors and supervisors is an integral part of the program’s design, not an afterthought. 

“That’s why you have a supervisor,” he said. He encourages other students, “Go ahead, go ask those questions.”

Christians Who Counsel

While Grace’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program is a counseling program with a Christian worldview, it is not training students to become Christian counselors.

“The faculty aren’t necessarily teaching us or training us to be Christian counselors,” he said. “They’re training us to be counselors who collaborate from a Christian framework.”

Why does this distinction matter? “We can’t turn anybody away. Why should we?” asked Davies. With Grace’s counseling degree, students are licensed to counsel anyone; it is not limited to a client’s religious beliefs or demographic.

This framework shows up in some difficult topics and coursework. In one of the program’s first courses, Dr. Tom Edgington tackles hard cultural conversations from a biblical perspective without avoiding them.

The Social & Cultural Issues class taught students how to go out to meet different people. They were asked to meet communities and cultures that are different from them. “I went to an Orthodox Jewish population. And just to be around them, meet them where they are, and not bring Jesus to them at all, was an eye-opening experience.”

Every student has a different story, but the lessons often have the same lasting impact.  One of Davies’ classmates put it this way, “Our job isn’t to be the lawyers of Jesus. We don’t even have to talk about Jesus, but we can be Jesus to them.”

Grace’s Online Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program

When asked what he would tell someone thinking about enrolling in this program, Davies quickly responded, “Do it.”

If you’ve recently decided to pursue a master’s in counseling, there are two questions that Davies recommends that every student ask themselves: “Why do you want to be a counselor? What are you expecting?” According to Davies, counselors aren’t advice-givers. “We don’t sit across from somebody and tell them, this is what you should do.” 

For those who clearly understand what they’re signing up for, his advice was simple: “This program is amazing. The professors are phenomenal. It is intense, but you learn a lot about yourself, about the field, and about how to really help people.”

Are you interested in Grace’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program? See how the program can work for you as you learn how to become a licensed professional counselor!