Nearly 60 million people live with mental health illnesses in the United States, according to the organization Mental Health America. Younger adults—those 18 to 25 years old—experienced the highest prevalence of mental health episodes.
The organization also reported that there are 340 people for every health care provider in the United States. So it is not surprising that the Master’s in Mental Health Counseling program at the University of Miami School of Education and Human Development has become popular, drawing hundreds of applicants a year.
MarieGuerda Nicolas, a professor at the school who directs the program, is a noted clinical psychologist with extensive knowledge on children, family, and community well-being.
Nicolas attributes the popularity of the program to several societal factors that are affecting the population at large and younger individuals, in particular. She also notes that talking about and dealing with mental health issues has become more accepted in today’s society.
“We live in a society where there are a whole lot of things that are not working well,” she said. “Whether we are talking about climate issues, challenges at work and managing work/life balance, a technology that constantly bombards us with news about wars and bad things that are happening. People are incredibly anxious and incredibly depressed about how they live and what is to come.”
The most prevalent episodes that Nicolas has seen are depression and anxiety. She has also noted that many young patients lack coping mechanisms to combat adversity or setbacks in their lives, she said.
“When I talk to young people, they don’t have resources to manage everyday things,” she said. “Covid, fires, and other calamities affect them, and they become anxious. They live in the future and forget to live today.”
To train future counselors to help those with mounting health concerns, the University’s program is one that can be completed in two, three, or four years.
Starting from the first semester, students engage in mock sessions where they pretend to be either counselor or patient. They are watched by a professor and videotaped so they can receive constant feedback on their performance.
“We are teaching them how to communicate, how to listen, and how to listen attentively enough to accompany their client on this journey,” Nicolas said. “They have to pay attention to how the person looks, their body language, as well as to how to find ways to connect with the person.”
One hallmark of the Master’s in Mental Health Counseling program is its emphasis on cultural responsiveness, which takes into consideration cultural and individual differences related to age, race, ethnicity, language, national origin, culture, religion/spirituality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, social class, disability, and geographic background.
This integral part of the program is one of the many things that drew Daija Boyd to the program. Boyd, who worked as a social worker and middle and high school teacher, will complete the master’s program in May. A first-generation Jamaican American, she grew up in a culture where mental or emotional issues were viewed as signs of fragility.
“One of the things that I love about this program is that one of its pillars is cultural competence,” she said. “When you look at the history of psychology or mental health in general, you find that it was not well rounded. When a discipline is taught from only one perspective, it is rigid instead of inclusive.”
Boyd said that a narrow perspective in evaluating a patient may lead to false diagnosis where certain mental health issues are perpetuated in some groups more than another.
“Research shows that certain populations suffer more from certain health issues but in reality, it could be that those populations have less access to resources, or those populations were not included in the research to begin with,” she said.
An important part of the master’s program is a practicum where students work for a year as interns in clinics, hospitals, educational institutions, or anywhere mental health services are offered as partnered with the University. Boyd is working at Larkin Community Hospital as an intake intern in the outpatient department, where she assesses the needs of patients with severe mental health concerns such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Many of them have “co-occurring disorders” wherein a patient struggles with both a severe mental health diagnosis and substance or alcohol use.
Boyd said that protective factors—family structure, education level, socioeconomic status, access to medicine and health care resources, age, faith/spirituality, as well as having a strong support system and involvement in the community—can make all the difference in helping patients.
