Clinical Mental Health Counseling Careers and Internships

In addition to your counseling coursework, you’ll spend 100 hours of pre-internship practicum and 600 hours in the field, gaining experience and honing your skills. Springfield College has excellent partnerships with outpatient psychiatric agencies, hospital-based inpatient psychiatric units, crisis intervention facilities, and local hospital emergency departments, among others that support you as you gain valuable experiences in the field. We’ll help find the right setting for you to grow personally and professionally as a clinician.

As part of the program, you’ll participate in a nine-credit clinical internship in which you will work closely with clients under the direct supervision of an on-site licensed supervisor and licensed faculty supervisor. Imagine the experience you would gain from working directly with a client in need.

We know what you really want to know—what do our graduates do after leaving Springfield College? We are proud to say that many of our clinical mental health counseling students are hired directly from their internships.

Your timing for a future in mental health counseling is great, too. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hiring of mental health counselors is expected to increase by 36 percent through 2020, faster than the average growth rate or most other fields. Many of these roles will be in areas including individual and family services, residential mental health and substance abuse facilities, and outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers.