Exam Prep

Benefits of Pre-Marital Counseling They’re excited. They’re in love and the day is quickly approaching when they marry the man/woman of their dreams. The next phase in life looks great. Most soon-to-be couples ask ‘What can possibly go wrong when you finally get to spend the rest of your days with your special someone?’ Why Few People Seek Pre-Marital Counseling Marriage is a big commitment, yet few engaged couples outside of religious communities go to pre-marital counseling. While most faith communities require couples to attend pre-marital counseling, couples with no faith background shy away from counseling. This has to do with fear. They don’t want to put a kink in a blossoming relationship. Engaged couples can be naïve and believe they can properly sort out their differences later. How Pre-Marital Counseling Can Help The benefits of pre-marital counseling, however, far outweigh the risks of addressing potential conflict before marriage. As a marriage and family therapist (MFT), you can offer engaged couples valuable advice. You can give them an unbiased, honest, outsider’s perspective on each partner’s shortcomings and bring up issues that need to be discussed before marriage. No marriage, after all, will be without disagreements and conflict. Pre-marital counseling is a key component in ensuring that couples will have marriages that last. You can address the communication and conflict resolution issues that lead to divorce and prepare them with a plan and solution for dealing with these inevitabilities.

All of us at the Therapist Development Center are pleased to announce that our new program for the California MFT Clinical exam has been launched!

Every 13 minutes there is a suicide in the United States.

Shout it from the roof tops: "Woo Hoo! Therapist Development Center has launched the California Law and Ethics Courses for LCSWs and MFTs!" We know a lot of you have been waiting patiently and we are proud to say that we have delivered the outstanding course therapists have come to expect from us. (And if you buy before the end of the year - you can save $50 -- see below).

In January of 2016, California will switch its LCSW and MFT licensing exams.

What happens if a client dies? Social workers and MFTs frequently ask me legal and ethical questions related to their private practice or licensing prep. One question that I get asked about a lot is the limits to confidentiality, and when we can, or cannot release information. It’s really tricky because there are a lot of different factors that go into this. As practitioners we have a responsibility to our clients and legal responsibilities as well. Let’s take a closer look at this with a sample question:

What's new in the field of mental health? The DSM 5! And while we all transition from the DSM IV to the DSM 5, it is good to take a look at what has changed. If you are preparing for the Social Work Exams or MFT Exams, the ASWB, the BBS, and the AAMTRB have all announced that the DSM 5 will not be tested until 2015.

Have you received absolutely no training as far as planning your social work career is concerned? If this is the case then you are not alone. I had the idea of creating this blog post after speaking to an MSW who was about to graduate from her program at USC, here in Los Angeles where I live, and while I was talking to her it became clear that while she had gotten good clinical training in her graduate program, she had no training in how to plan for her own career. One of the things we aim to do at my company, the Therapist Development Center, besides helping people pass their social work exams, is to actually provide support to therapists throughout their careers. By support I mean giving essential information that is very practical – practical advice. So in this post I want to go through some of the key things that I wish I had known and have learned since I have been out in the field for the past almost 10 years now. The following five points are things I think every social worker should know when they graduate from their MSW program.