Clinicians often tell Taqueena Quintana, a licensed professional counselor (LPC) in Washington, D.C, that they find it difficult to start working with the military population as a civilian counselor. They want to know how she managed to do it despite not having any personal military experience.

Quintana was first introduced to the military population when she was a counselor at a substance abuse agency. Some of her clients were veterans, and because she hadn’t been trained to work with this population, she started doing her own research.

Then, later as an adjunct instructor of counseling, she had the opportunity to teach a course for combat veterans, and she noticed how their mental health challenges directly affected their personal and professional lives. For example, one student suffered from memory loss because of a traumatic brain injury he received during service. He excelled when he spoke in class, but he had difficulty completing written assignments, which affected his employment and academics.

Through these experiences, Quintana discovered she enjoyed working with veterans, so she decided to do it full-time by working as a counselor on a military base. Now she owns Transformation Counseling Services, a private practice where she works with military populations.

Connect with professionals who work with this population 

Quintana, an assistant professor of counseling at Arkansas State University and a deployed resiliency counselor for the Navy, acknowledges that she wouldn’t have been successful in working with military clients without support from her mentors, supervisors and colleagues. Early in her counseling career, she would go to ACA conferences and attend every military presentation she could – not only to learn more about military mental health but also to make connections with others working in this field.

Quintana also advises counselors to find supervisors and mentors who are connected to the military branches they want to work with. One of her supervisors is a Navy spouse and another is an Army veteran. In addition to providing her with advice on counseling military clients, they refer her for possible job opportunities.

Now Quintana is in a position to support other counselors who want to work with this population. She volunteers with the National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation’s mentor program, which matches counselors who have similar interests and career aspirations. One of her mentees choose Quintana specifically because of the work she has done with the Army. “You seek people in those [military] positions to help you get there yourself,” Quintana says.

Keith Myers, dean of clinical affairs and an associate professor of counseling at Richmont Graduate University, recommends counselors join the Military and Government Counseling Association (MGCA), a division of ACA, or ACA’s Veterans Interest Network, which provide them with access to journals, newsletters and trainings. The Center for Deployment Psychology is another great resource for trainings and education, he adds.

Gain experience with military-connected organizations

Quintana found creating her own knowledge base and foundation in working with this population to be helpful, professionally. “A lot of times, employers want to see that you have some sort of knowledge or experience in [the area in which] you’re working,” she says. “It doesn’t mean you can’t find opportunities. It just means that you have to intentionally position yourself in these spaces where you can gain these opportunities (paid or unpaid).”

Myers, an LPC with a private practice serving veterans in Marietta, Georgia, suggests counselors get involved with military-associated organizations such as the Wounded Warrior Project (which offers programs and resources for wounded veterans who served on or after 9/11) or Give An Hour (which provides free mental health care to veterans and their families).

Tanya Workman, an LPC and the training director for the licensed professional mental health counselor training program at the South Texas Veterans Health Care System’s Frank Tejeda Outpatient Clinic in San Antonio, recommends clinicians look for opportunities at military hospitals and clinics such as the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Endeavors, a Texas-based provider that provides mental health care to veterans and their families regardless of their role while in uniform or discharge status. They can also volunteer at the Veterans Crisis Line, which connects veterans in crisis and their families with a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) responder, she adds.

There are also training programs geared toward graduate students. The VA’s Office of Academic Affiliations offers a training program for master’s-level counseling students, says Workman, an ACA member and Army veteran. Some of the VA offices are providing internships for these students as a way to train more mental health professional in the specific mental health needs of the military service members and veterans, she explains.

One job position available to counselors is a deployed resiliency counselor, Quintana says. These counselors work for the U.S. Department of Defense or the Navy (but they do not have to be a military member themselves). As Quintana explains, the counselors go on tour with the unit and provide mental health counseling to service members during their deployment.

Find experience outside the VA

“The VA is not the only facility in which [counselors] can work with veterans and active-duty military,” Quintana stresses. “There are organizations and agencies [such as the American Red Cross, Catholic Charities and Salvation Army] that offer opportunities for counselors to position themselves to work with veterans and active-duty military.”

A military family life counselor is another job position that counselors may want to consider, Quintana continues. In this role, counselors are sent to bases in the states or overseas and provide solution-focused, nonmedical counseling to service members and their family. It’s a contracted position with organizations outside the VA and U.S. government and does not require previous experience working with the military, Quintana says.

Myers, an ACA member whose clinical specialties include veteran issues, trauma and combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder, agrees that counselors don’t have to look for organizations that are strictly veteran service providers. Veterans seek help from many different organizations such as psychiatric hospitals or residential treatment centers, he points out.

Myers actually discovered his passion for working with military clients when he took a job at a rehabilitation hospital that had an outpatient service for veterans with traumatic brain injury and mental health issues.

A good fit

Adrian Marquez, a licensed mental health counselor and owner of the private practice Calm in the Storms in Melbourne, Florida, created and serves as the director of programming for The Sheepdog Program, a mental health and substance abuse program for veterans and first responders. He carefully and meticulously selects counselors for this program because he knows the job can be demanding at times. But it’s also rewarding, he adds.

He looks for counselors whose personality would fit in well with the military culture, but that doesn’t mean they must have military experience. For example, one clinician Marquez hired is a world record-holder marathon runner. When Marquez, a retired Marine master sergeant and Marine Raider, discovered the counselor had trained for marathons to the point that his toenails fell off, he knew that this counselor understood what it was like to push yourself beyond your limits. He had the endurance mindset that so many veterans share.

According to Marquez, “It’s finding the right personality, the right character and the people that are willing do [this work] with the right heart.”

 

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Related reading:

See the “From Combat to Counseling” column series at CT Online, including one on this topic, “Getting started in counseling military clients.”

See Counseling Today‘s November magazine for an in-depth feature on working with military and veteran clients, “Counseling in the trenches.”

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Lindsey Phillips is a contributing writer to Counseling Today and a UX content strategist. Contact her at hello@lindseynphillips.com or through her website at lindseynphillips.com.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.