Job Fair Atlanta

How to become a therapist/counselor with a bachelor degree in Business Management?

I have a degree in business mgmt and have decided to go into therapy/counseling (any specialty)...I'm trying to find out if there is anyway to get a job in this field without getting a master's degree.....I do not want to go back to school. Thanks for any help you can give!

Public Comments

1. To do anything in therapy/counseling you need to have a PhD, masters as a bare minimum (and even then it's rare). You should know better than asking.
2. You can perhaps do self-employment as a motivational speaker, career counselor or life coach. The more you're approaching a formal therapist or counselor role, sorry, you're SOL. Those industries may be regulated formally by government or informally by industry associations (whose rules and requirements can be even more stringent) but there's very good reasons why they just don't let anyone join the club. You're talking about influencing people's mental health here - just letting anyone do that professionally without appropriate training and education is kind of reckless.
3. Nope. In most states, you need a Master's degree or higher to be licensed by the state to do therapy. Certainly no HMO is going to do any reimbursement for someone without an appropriate degree. It would also be difficult to get referrals from people in a position to do so without proper training.
4. You need to ask your self some deep questions, firstly being a therapist is not just a job and no qualifications are as important as your ability to interact and understand people. If you think being a therapist is a quick way to earn money then your mistaken, it takes years of practice and learning skills that can not be found in books alone. You also need life skills and they only come with living life and learning from your own experiences. Qualifications like masters degrees do not make good therapists on their own, there are some so called well qualified therapists that are less capable than your local barman at therapy. If you want to be a therapist you need to understand that it can be a very difficult line of work that can effect you deeply, you will understand this if you have a client that sits opposite you and tells you that they have decided to kill them selves, they thank you for all your help and then go and end their life, as a person you will be affected by such an out come and if you think you can handle that then all the best and I wish you well. There are so many people who just think they can do therapy and see it as an easy job, I can tell you that its not, but it can also be very rewarding if your the right person.