Counseling Psychology in Clinical Health Psychology: The Impact of Specialty Perspective

Not all clinical health psychologists are trained as clinical psychologists. A significant minority is trained and identifies as counseling psychologists. As a field, it is important to understand how the specialty-specific values, training context, scholarship, and parameters of practice of counseling psychology contribute to clinical health psychology. In this article, we (a) identify the core values and training context of counseling psychology, (b) review the scholarly history of clinical health psychology by counseling psychologists, (c) present the parameters of practice of clinical health psychology as identified from the extant counseling psychology literature, and (d) examine American Psychological Association membership status to investigate joint membership in the Division of Health Psychology and the Society of Counseling Psychology. Conclusions indicate that (a) an identifiable set of core values guides the training of counseling psychologists, (b) scholarly literature by counseling psychologists has contributed to the growth and development of clinical health psychology, and (c) parameters of practice reflect the specialty-specific perspective of counseling psychology. As professional psychology continues to grow as a health care profession, clinical health psychology will benefit from the knowledge, values, attitudes, competencies, and practice parameters of counseling psychology, and counseling psychology will benefit from recognizing what it brings to the practice of clinical health psychology.