The authors describe a sustainable, international collaboration involving faculty from mental health training programs at a university in the United States and a university in Mexico. The article highlights how cross-border collaboration among mental health educators contributes to addressing global mental health issues to advance the professionalization of counseling. Through a detailed account of the partnership’s evolution, strategic focus areas, implementation processes, and outcomes, we detail both the transformative potential and the practical complexities of such initiatives. We conclude by offering insights into challenges and actionable recommendations for fostering impactful international collaborations that contribute to global mental health and community well-being.

The authors explored how feminist clinical supervisors in South Korea develop their supervisory identities and incorporate feminist principles into supervision. Four Korean feminist supervisors participated in semi-structured interviews, and the data were analyzed using reflective thematic analysis guided by a constructivist perspective. The research team generated six themes: feminist counselor identification, immersion into feminist counseling, liminal experience, four principles of feminist counseling, feminist supervisory insight, and activism and advocacy. The findings highlight how participants navigated challenges in aligning their feminist values with traditional supervision models, integrating feminist counseling principles into their supervision, and fostering social justice and empowerment in their supervisory roles. Despite structural barriers, they emphasized the importance of advocacy and activism within supervision to mentor future feminist counselors. The study contributes to the discourse on feminist supervision, offering insights into the South Korean context and suggesting implications for counselor education and future research.

The quality and content of counsellor education is largely determined by the educators who deliver the training, yet little is known about them. The authors aimed to generate a snapshot of Australian counselling educators. Publicly available educator profile data (name, professional identity, qualifications, academic level, and professional registration status) was collected for all Australian accredited counselling courses, via systematic review of institutional websites and relevant public online sources. Included in the study were 337 educator profiles (71.5% female and 27.6% male), with 32.9% identifying as counsellors, followed by 16% as psychologists, 6.5% as psychotherapists and 3.9% as both counsellor and psychotherapist. The remaining 40.7% either did not specify or identify with another profession. The study also examined registration status, therapeutic experience, course co-ordinator professional identity and academic level. Counsellors who teach into accredited programs occupy mostly junior level academic positions, with 80% of senior counselling academics not holding any counselling qualifications. Results highlighted the wide range of professional identities that teach counselling and noted non-adherence to accreditation standards with respect to staffing profiles. We conclude that the lack of counselling professional identity amongst educators is concerning for the strength of the counselling profession and identity more broadly. Educators who are not counsellors may struggle to socialise counselling students into the profession, and clearly explain counselling philosophy and practice, as distinct from their own profession. This research can be used to inform training and accreditation standards, guide decision-making in the educating of counsellors, as well as offering a baseline to monitor change over time.

This study takes on calls in the counseling field for evaluation of culturally responsive and youth culture-centered group counseling strategies. Hip Hop Counseling (HHC) is one such counseling strategy, used to support children and adolescents in writing, recording, and performing Hip Hop songs/lyrics as a means of processing difficult emotional experiences. Calls have also been made to form university researcher and practitioner partnerships to further effective counseling evaluations. The current study, therefore, describes a preliminary evaluation of the Beats, Rhymes, and Life (BRL) small-group HHC program conducted collaboratively by BRL and university research partners. We address two aims (1) the co-construction of a Theory of Change to explicate outcomes, mechanisms, and precursors; and (2) statistical analysis of key mental health and well-being outcomes. Findings reveal that youth reported lower depression and anxiety symptoms after participating in BRL’s HHC small-group programming and highlights additional intrapersonal, interpersonal, and social-emotional mechanisms.

Abstract The current study examined the impact of multicultural factors (ethnic identity, acculturation, perceived discrimination, and gender role attitudes) on the mental health of Chinese international students in the U.S. The study was guided by the Multicultural Assessment-Intervention Process (MAIP) model that focuses on multicultural issues imbedded in mental health service delivery and research. Using a convenience sample of 315 Chinese international students currently studying in the U.S., seven standard multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the impact of multicultural factors on mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms). The results indicated that having higher ethnic identity commitment, acculturation to either mainstream U.S. culture or Chinese culture, egalitarian gender role attitudes, and lower ethnic identity exploration, generally predicted better mental health outcomes. Conversely, higher levels of perceived discrimination predicted poorer mental health outcomes for Chinese international students. Counseling implications, limitations, and future research were discussed.