Licensed Professional Counselor

Licensed professional counselors, or LPCs, are health professionals trained to help people address mental health concerns. They work with individuals, couples, families, or groups of people with similar problems to help them cope with emotional issues, such as those related to stress, depression, career, or self-esteem. To become qualified as an LPC, people must earn a master’s, specialist, or doctoral degree in mental health counseling or a related field, and fulfill other credentialing requirements, including getting supervised experience and passing a national exam.

LPCs have an expertise in mental health support that is dearly appreciated in underserved areas, where pressures of daily life can be great, and mental health support is critical but in extremely short supply.

Jennifer Holm, LPC
One Door Closes,While Others Open for Troubled Southern Texas Kids

As she closes the file on her professional relationship with a 12-year-old girl, Jennifer Holm feels a familiar bittersweet emotion. It’s sad for licensed professional counselor Holm to say good-bye to the kids she’s helped, but they keep in touch to share their good news as their lives move forward. Holm teaches life-coping skills to children—many of whom have been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused—in the southern Texas city of Edinburg, 15 miles from the Mexico border.

Not too long ago, this particular adolescent girl was repeatedly running away from home, engaging in sexual behavior, and taking illegal drugs. In her work with the girl and her family, Holm has seen the preteen transformed—becoming a straight-A student, not running away, and putting a halt to her sex and drug habits. "I’m really proud of how excellently these kids I work with do," says the 32-year-old Holm of the children she helps through the program known as TCOOMMI, the Texas Counsel of Offenders with Mental and Medical Impairments. "They have goals for their lives."

We asked Holm about the NHSC:

What difference has the NHSC made in your community?
With the NHSC’s support, this program has made a huge difference. A lot of these kids are in gangs. They’re often on probation. They’ve quit school. They’re pregnant. But I see them turn their lives totally around in a matter of 4, 6, 8 months.

What difference has the NHSC made in your professional life?
I don’t know if I would have stayed here if it wasn’t for the NHSC because it was culture shock at first. I felt like an outsider among 98 percent Hispanics, especially because I didn’t speak much Spanish. During the first couple of months, I might have left and gone back home to my comfort zone in the rural town I knew, but I stayed because I had a commitment to the NHSC and this community. Here I am about a year later—my commitment ends in a little over a year, but I’ve grown to love it here and can’t see myself leaving anytime soon.