Cozy Couch Counseling

​​I believe that working with clients with eating disorders and members of the queer community are both areas where our field struggles to sufficiently educate counselors during grad school; in many programs, classes about eating disorders and the queer community are entirely elective. This gap in our standards of education is, in my opinion, unacceptable. These are two highly vulnerable populations with alarming rates of suicidality and self harm. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any diagnosis in the DSM-V, and research consistently demonstrates that queer people (particularly queer youth!) are significantly more likely to experience mental health issues than their heterosexual peers. This discrepancy is even higher between trans and nonbinary individuals and their cisgender peers.

 

If you are a counselor struggling to support clients within these populations, it is not your fault. However, improving your competence in these areas is still your ethical responsibility. This is a systemic issue that unfortunately falls on us as individual counselors to remedy for ourselves.

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To do my part to close that educational gap, I provide clinical supervision to LPCCs pursuing licensure and consultation to LPCCs or LPCs seeking more information about treating eating disorders, supporting genderqueer clients, working with neurodivergence, teens, or signing letters of support. I have also given educational presentations on these topics to colleagues, and am always looking for opportunities to improve counselor education in these areas to better serve members of these vulnerable communities.