Society of Counseling Psychology President's Welcome

SCP welcomes you to join our efforts to promote healing and thriving in all people and communities. Our members work toward this vision by adopting holistic and strength-based approaches in the field of psychology and in the public sector through practice, research, education and training, advocacy, consultation, and leadership.

SCP provides valuable resources to members and the public. For example, we publish two journals (The Counseling Psychologist and Journal Prevention and Health Promotion), we have smaller sections for those who want to build community and promote specific issues of interest that are consistent with our mission (e.g., advancement of women, advocacy for sexual orientation and gender diversity, ethnic and racial diversity, and health psychology), we offer student and professional awards, we provide webinars and other trainings that are housed on our website where people can access them free of charge, and so much more.

Standing on the shoulders of transformative leaders in the field who have boldly addressed pressing societal issues such liberation, disrupting anti-Black racism and centering Indigenous perspectives, I am honored to have the opportunity to work with our professional community to promote individual and collective wellbeing. Enduring threats to civil liberties, COVID-related trauma, climate concerns, racial and other forms of oppression, all cause stress and impact our mental health. And counseling psychology has the tools to assist in deep healing that involves both personal growth and societal transformation.

My presidential initiative – Justice & Joy: Transforming Healing Praxis in Counseling Psychology and Beyond – builds on the ongoing efforts of SCP. Over the next year, we will engage in coordinated activities to interrogate the justice and joy components of healing with the hope of transforming our long-term theory and practice in research, training, advocacy, and therapy. We will tackle questions such as what are models of healing that address the complexities of individual and collective wellbeing? What are the key justice issues impacting mental health? What is joy and how does it facilitate individual and collective wellbeing? And, throughout we will explore the ways counseling psychology can cultivate healing through promoting justice and joy in our work.

I invite you to become involved in our healing transformation. Stay tuned for more information about the various Justice & Joy events we will offer, including public lectures, virtual book/reading discussions, webinars, podcast episodes, op-eds, and healing activities for our members. Additionally, we will have larger culminating activities/resources such as a journal special issue, Justice & Joy in healing archive, and a Joy Summit to be held the day before the 2024 APA convention.

Be well, find joy, engage in action!