For Parents
Counselor, therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, coach. The labels overlap in ordinary speech and diverge sharply in what each is licensed to do — and calling the wrong one costs a family weeks. Here is the plain map.
Start here
This is the distinction parents ask about most, and it is the one that matters least. In ordinary use, counseling and therapy and psychotherapy describe the same activity: a trained professional working with a client to understand and change something. Different professions have historically preferred different words, and a few clinicians draw a line between short-term problem-solving and longer-term work. Nothing about who to call turns on it.
The distinction that actually matters is licensure — what a person is legally credentialed and trained to do, and who holds them accountable for doing it properly. “Counselor” on its own is a loose word. Licensed Professional Counselor is a regulated credential with a state board behind it.
The other distinction that matters is scope. Several different professions work with adolescents, and they do genuinely different jobs. Calling the wrong one costs you weeks. The rest of this page is a plain map of who does what.
The short version
Who does what
These roles overlap and frequently work together. What follows is what each is trained and credentialed for, and the honest limit of each — including mine.
A master’s-level clinician licensed by the state to assess and treat mental health concerns through counseling. In Alabama, licensed and regulated by the Board of Examiners in Counseling, where any LPC’s license can be verified by name. This is the license held at Mentors LLC.
Cannot: prescribe medication, and does not conduct formal psychological or educational testing.
Doctoral-level. Provides therapy, and is additionally trained in psychological assessment — the formal testing that answers questions like whether a learning disorder or ADHD is present, or clarifies a complicated diagnostic picture. If a school is asking for testing, this is usually who you need.
Cannot: prescribe medication in Alabama.
Medical prescribers. If medication is a live question — or already in use and not working — this is the right call. Many adolescents see a prescriber for medication and a counselor for the therapeutic work, which is a normal and effective arrangement rather than a sign something went wrong.
Note: your pediatrician is a reasonable first stop and can refer.
Employed by the school, working across hundreds of students. Genuinely valuable for academics, scheduling, college and career planning, short-term support, and connecting a family to outside resources. Often the first person to notice something.
Cannot: provide sustained, confidential outpatient treatment for a clinical concern. It is a caseload problem, not a competence one.
Goal-setting, motivation, accountability, structure. Useful for a student who is fundamentally well and wants to get somewhere. Coaching is an unregulated field — there is no state license, no board, and no required clinical training.
Cannot: treat a mental health condition. If distress is the presenting issue, coaching is the wrong tool.
Intensive outpatient, partial hospitalisation, residential, and inpatient care exist for when a weekly appointment is not enough — active safety risk, an eating disorder requiring medical monitoring, substance dependence, or symptoms that outpatient work has not moved.
Worth knowing: recommending a higher level of care is part of responsible outpatient practice, not a failure of it.
Before you hand over a card
Anyone may call themselves a counselor, a coach, or a therapist in casual usage. A licensed credential is verifiable in about two minutes, and it is worth doing for any clinician you are about to trust with your child — including me.
Alabama counseling licenses are searchable by name through the Alabama Board of Examiners in Counseling. A license number printed on a website means nothing until you have matched it against the board’s own record.
John Preston Gunn — LPC #02770, LPC-S #SC03158
Working well with adults does not transfer automatically. Ask what proportion of their caseload is aged twelve to eighteen, and how they handle the parent relationship. A clinician who has thought about the second question has usually thought about the first.
Not the session rate — the total. If a practice does not bill insurance, federal law entitles you to a written Good Faith Estimate of expected charges before services begin. Ask for it. A practice that hesitates has told you something.
The best single question you can ask. A clinician with a real answer — measured goals, a review point, a willingness to refer on — is thinking like a professional. A clinician who has never considered it is thinking like a subscription.
Still deciding
Yes, and for a good number of adolescents that combination works better than either alone. AACAP notes that medication combined with psychotherapy is sometimes the most effective approach. The two providers should be talking to each other, which requires your written release — ask for it to be set up rather than assuming it happened.
Sometimes it genuinely is, and if so you have saved yourself money. It stops being enough when the concern is clinical rather than academic, when it needs sustained confidential work rather than periodic check-ins, or when the caseload simply cannot support the frequency your student needs.
The practical test: ask the school counselor whether they think an outside referral is warranted. They see this distinction constantly and are usually candid about it.
No. This is a private-pay practice, which is why every rate and the full program total are published on the fees page rather than quoted on a call, and why you receive a written Good Faith Estimate before anything starts.
Reduced-fee places are available and the criteria are published alongside the rates. If cost is the obstacle, say so on the consultation call.
Then we should establish that quickly and I should help you go elsewhere. Fit between a teenager and a counselor is not a minor variable — it is a substantial part of whether counseling works at all, and it is not a personal matter when it is absent.
A referral is a normal professional act. Any clinician who treats your leaving as a betrayal has confirmed you were right to.
More for parents
The three-part test for telling a hard season apart from something that needs attention, and the signs that mean act now rather than wait.
Exactly what happens from the consultation call through the end of the first appointment — who is in the room, what gets asked, and what your student controls.
A short printable guide to what the opening weeks of counseling look like, and the questions worth asking any counselor before you commit. No email required.
Ready to talk it through?
Tell me what you are seeing at home. If counseling here is the right fit, we will talk about what the program looks like for your student. If it is not, I will tell you that and point you toward who is.
