Online Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling

My name is Leo Castillo, and currently I work as a mental health specialist for the courts and I also teach here at Northwest in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program, and I actually graduated in 2017. So I chose to pursue a master's degree because of the opportunities that it can provide. My ability to, you know, kind of acquire some specialized skills and education to be able to make a bigger impact in my community. And I felt like just I wasn't able to help to my full capacity. So I heard of Northwest through a cousin of mine who was attending the ICD program. I also was working at a mental health agency and my clinical director was actually a graduate of Northwest, as well as two of my other colleagues. And they had, you know, nothing but great things to say about the university. And and that spoke to me. They had a very superior work ethic. And that was definitely something that I wanted for myself, was to kind of acquire those skills.

These classes have really taught, you know, taught me to shape my counseling skills and how to identify some necessary therapeutic interventions to de-escalate people who are suffering with a crisis or through a crisis. The program definitely, you know, has a cultural and social justice component to it. And it really teaches from that framework of, you know, helping out marginalized communities, how we can provide equitable treatment and services to those who are really in need.

And so I think from that aspect, the university really does a good job of training students to enter into the field and provide those services. One thing that really stood out to me with one of my professors was he mentioned to me that wherever there's—this is kind of poetic—but wherever there's brokenness, there's beauty. And that really resonated with me. And, you know, throughout the program, I really started to see things from a different lens. It really has taught me to as a therapist, you know, really bring out the good side of people and know that there is a good side to every person. My cohort, you know, they're very, very special to me. Even still to this day, we keep in contact for the most part. And I think with the cohort model, it's really helped me to go through the program and, you know, share my experiences with other people who are kind of going through the same thing. It really creates this this community of students who are after the same goal, you know, and after the program we are now colleagues. Another thing, too, is that the professors have this sort of warmth around them. They've been very welcoming office hours even, you know, just after class, if we if I ever had any questions, very accommodating.

It was something that I'd look forward to every night after work because it was a change of pace. I got to do what I what what I enjoyed most was, you know, counseling and learning about counseling and, you know, being with my classmates and that sort of thing. Having gotten my master's degree, has really provided a better quality of life for myself and for my family. Also going to—attending a faith based university at the core of who I am is my faith. And one thing that hasn't failed me is my faith and also my education. And so the integration of the two has really, you know, brought my life a higher quality and and has really made a difference to me and my family. Living in the midst of a pandemic, you know, people are struggling with mental illness. And there's a huge there's a huge need for individuals who are, you know, going to be providing that care to people. It really opens up your eyes to a lot of things and it opens up a lot of opportunities. And so if private practice isn't something that you want to do, there are a million other opportunities out there within the clinical realm. I would definitely encourage it, you know, and then ask questions if you have any, because that really helped me to make a very informed decision.

So my name is James Gibson and I graduated from the Masters of Arts in Counseling Psychology Program from here, at Northwest University in 2018. Born and raised in Oregon, and held odds and ends jobs until I found my true calling. And that was joining the United States Army where I served for twenty one years. Multiple deployments, multiple combat deployments, and retired in August 2016 as a master sergeant—realized that mental health was a big portion to me.

I came back from a deployment in 2006, a different person, a changed person, and I didn't like who I was. I was having difficulty with work. I was having difficulty with family. And that's when I went and got help. And through that help sparked a passion of psychology in my own self. I decided at the time I was working on an undergrad degree and just general studies because I didn't know where I wanted to go with it and dove into psychology.

And I found I was really, really passionate about it. So when I got out of the military and retired from the military, I thought, this is a way I can give back. I know mental health care works. I know that coming from the depths of the darkness of where I was to moving towards the light and being happy and chasing that happiness, I can still do that.

With a gentle push of my wife, she said, why don't you get in psychology, become a counselor? And it just made perfect sense. And so I did. And I hunted around and I found Northwest University. I was teaching at Purdue University when we had made the decision that, hey, I need to go to grad school. And so it was simple online search. And I found a few of them and I didn't want to put all my ducks in one basket. And so I applied for for multiple programs throughout the Pacific Northwest, up from south as far south as Lacey up in here and to Seattle, Kirkland.

Through the admissions process, it was one of the easier ones. It was pretty straightforward, cut and dry. Some of the things that lean me towards Northwest right off the bat was no GRE. And for us enlisted guys coming out of the military, getting a bachelor's degree is pretty tough. OPTEMPO is usually really high in the military. And so finding the time to even dive down and get a bachelor's degree, let alone, now I've got to study and prep for a GRE and pass a GRE. And it's really time consuming. But it was lack of GRE, the single cohort concept that I absolutely—like it intrigued me at the beginning. And then through the two years that I was here doing this program, I couldn't fathom doing this program in any other way than the single cohort system that they've got. I had a couple of unique perspectives or unique scenarios or situations with the single cohort system. What it does is it provides it truly provides a safe space where I could fully say what my beliefs were without being looked down upon without anybody—

I'm not going to say challenge because that's exactly what that cohort system I believe a big portion of it is, you do, you challenge each other's views and you challenge your own internal way of thought. Now, I'm in a complete different group of people that think differently than me and challenged me to think differently. That's number one. And number two, another beautiful portion of it is you get to know everybody there and you learn what the different strengths, the benefits of working with different people in that group because they think differently. They have different cultures, have different upbringings, different backgrounds. And you really get to know that group. They become family essentially because you are spending a lot of time with a certain amount of people. It really provides some really good cohesion and continuity when you're doing group projects and moving from one class to the next to the next to the next, because then you understand what strengths, what weaknesses these people have in different groups. And it just it makes it a lot easier. And then you feel a whole lot more comfortable. The classes or nighttime classes. So I remember 6:00 to 10:00. They're hard work. I'm not going to say it's easy work.

Grad school is very difficult and it's time consuming, but a good time management skills. And the professors are very it's one of the beautiful things about going to brick and mortar school is the professors are available, you call them, you can email them and you're getting responses back pretty quick, which is a complete flip from when I was doing online classes in the army where you'd send a send a question to the professor and you might not get an answer for five or six days. Grad school, the age of the students tends to be a little bit higher.

There's a lot of us that have families, a lot of us, all the professors understood that. They understood. A lot of us are holding jobs, working 40 hours and coming to this class and doing these monster papers and reading hundreds of pages a week and trying to absorb as much information as we could. They understood that. So if you're having difficulty with something, it was just a talk with the professor and they will work something out because it wasn't about making you feel as if you had to maintain a certain standard.

It was, it seemed every professor provided you with this feeling that, hey, I'm going to draw 100% of you and I'm not going to judge your performance off of somebody else's performance. I'm judging your performance off of you. And that's kind of the way the whole program was, like that's the way it felt. So my dream role, I'm living it right now and I'm working it right now. In fact, I'm a child and family therapist with the Steven A. Cohen Military Families Clinic at Valley Cities where we provide free to low cost mental health counseling to post 9/11 veterans and their families. Through the internship program that was here, plus the internship fair and the guidance that was given by professors.

It was, it opened my mind to see, hey, it's not just PTSD. There's so much, you've got to look holistically and see that in military families are more than that. They're hey, you can do couples, like who better to do couples than you, James, because you're married for twenty two years and you spent twenty one of them in the army and working with kids. I've got three beautiful, amazing kids and Dr. Leggett and family systems changed my family because one of the things that when I came into grad school, I came out with open mind and said, whatever you teach me here and tell me that I am supposed to be doing my clients, I will do myself. And so all of this family information, all of this stuff I wrapped into my family and I started to implement in my family and I live a dream. And in fact, I think I told you when I walked in here, I do. I live a dream because I work my dream job. And the only reason I open my eyes to start looking for something in that was this program helped me say, don't pigeonhole yourself into this. And in fact, there was times where I had a couple of professors talk about two years, give yourself two years, because your passion you'll find over a couple of years is going to not be at the level that it was when you first started it. And clients deserve your 100% passion. And so I found this job.

Amazing program, amazing supervisor there. And it was because I was motivated by my counselor, by my professors here to, don't pigeonhole yourself into one thing, expand your horizons and chase your happiness. And so that's what I did. And now I found this job at this clinic. And it's a beautiful. Couple of things I know for a fact. Number one, you're going to be challenged and you're going to challenge yourself and the faculty are going to challenge you in ways that you didn't think were possible.

But they do it in a way that you don't really necessarily know you're being challenged until after the class. And you look back at where you were. The professors challenged us that on a daily basis, there's so many, so many memories I have of going, no, that's not how it works. No, no, no, no.

And then three weeks later going, you know he's right or she's right. It is like, oh, man, I never thought of looking at it like that. Or one of my favorite memories was, like I said, I was the only guy there. And I had mentioned that, you know, talk about safe space. This is an example of the safe space was I had shared something and I had said and then I cried like a little schoolgirl and my classmate sitting next to me, looks over to me and she goes, James you didn't cry like a little schoolgirl. You cried like a 41 year old combat vet. I was like, you know, you're right, because that's what I am. Expressing emotions isn't a weakness. Expressing emotions is what our body is supposed to do. That's what our mind's supposed to do. And in fact, that's probably that's top three thing that this program helped me learn was expressing your emotions is OK. And that's where that's what they're for, is to express them, is to feel them and get to understand them and know it's OK if you want to cry and know if, it's OK to be angry, it's OK to cry, it's OK to be sad. It's when we try and stuff those down that we have problems. And this program really opened my mind to that and saying, hey, it's it's OK.

And that's one of the beautiful things about that single cohort system is, you know, at the beginning it's a little awkward. But after a while you get to know each other and you understand that everybody is there for a common purpose and we're there to support each other. And you get comfortable expressing your emotions and processing some of the tough stuff that you've been through in life.

Go to NU. Go to NU! Go to this program. This counseling master's in counseling programs are just beautiful.

The process is easy, like they make admissions so simple and so easy and so like, they allow you to focus on the school work and learning. It provides truly a learning environment where I was paying for my school through the GI Bill. They would sign me up for scholarships and grants that automatically where they'd be like, oh, hey, James, here's the Yellow Ribbon Fund. Seven hundred dollars. Where did this come from? Oh, it's this scholarship program that we have for veterans. Oh, well, great. Beautiful, wonderful. And really just made it so easy to where all I had to focus on was showing up at my class, doing the work and learning. Learning and then doing the work. And that was another beautiful thing. This program never, never made me feel like it was get this assignment done and do the assignment. It's hey, let's learn some things, learn this stuff, understand and demonstrate your understanding and then we'll test you on.

My name is Danielle Christianson, and I am a licensed mental health counselor with the state of Washington in private practice, and I have a practice in Puyallup and I also have a wellness center in Puyallup and my practice happens to be in that center. I started my practice actually three months after I graduated from Northwest on September 1st of 2015. I pretty much hang my shingle and opened shop.

So I used to work for our church in administration. We have a really large church down in our area. But when I was working there, several of the pastors actually suggested that I should go into counseling. And so I spoke with one of the pastors there and another local area pastor, Pastor Roger Archer and Pastor Art Collins at our church, who suggested coming to Northwest because it would fit both an adult lifestyle and schedule. And they had really great things to say about it, both being alumni. And so I just went with it. Some of my best memories, really, the friendships from both undergraduate and graduate school. In fact, one friend that I made in college at during graduate school is going to be coming and opening her private practice in my center, and she lives here in Kirkland, so she'll be making the commute down. So I'm really excited to have her.

Being a person of faith, that's a really big piece of it, because what I appreciated about Northwest University is that they took the science of psychology and really married it up really well with the truth of theology. And so any of my Christian population that I work with, down in Puyallup, really appreciates that being that a lot of Christians are hesitant sometimes with psychology. And so it's nice to be able to sort of blend those two worlds. And so I felt really prepared in that way. That was a really big take away. The fact that the professors would pray for you and with you sometimes was really amazing. And so for me personally, that was a big aspect of being a person of faith. I would say anybody that might be watching this, even though it could feel daunting, it could feel overwhelming.

Northwest University offers a lot of opportunity in several different ways, as I mentioned, networking, friendships, and the faith aspect. But they really encourage you to follow your dreams. And so I think it's an amazing place to go to school and feel really prepared when you come out. And it's a really amazing for adults because we learn different when we have older brains. So I really appreciate that too. So I would encourage anybody that wants to go to Northwest to attend.

My name is Shalini Newbigging and I am a training and development manager working in Mumbai with International Justice Mission. When I was getting my master's in counseling at Northwest, I received the opportunity, found out that there was a job opening in Mumbai to work with this population of women that had been trafficked for sex in the city of Mumbai. It was an open door that God had provided for me to move back to my home, to be able to work with women that had been trafficked.

It was important for me, the work that IJM was doing in the city of Mumbai, because that was where I had lived. And during my time there, I had no idea about the issue of trafficking and didn't know about the hundreds and thousands of women and even young girls that were being trafficked to Mumbai and were being sexually exploited on a daily basis. So it was an important step for me to be able to go back and be able to help my people in the way that I knew best through the skills that I had gotten here at Northwest.

The thing that drew me most to the program in Northwest was, of course, the focus on social justice issues. When I joined the program, even the word social justice were not something that were very common in society at all. People weren't talking about social justice issues. And so in a way, I feel that Northwest really has helped students that have gone through the program be pioneers in their own way, in their in their own fields, because it was such such a forward thinking program.

I think the program here was one of the warmest two years that I've experienced, even though Seattle is pretty, pretty cold, just being around people that were so encouraging and so supportive of each individual dream and each individual vision that we had for our lives. I was always met with so much excitement for the things that I was excited about and I was always guided down, you know, the most appropriate path, whether it was for an internship or whether it was for exposure visits. The professors and the staff at Northwest were always just the most welcoming and warm group of people. And that really helped with a program that is quite extensive and quite challenging. It was very, very encouraging to have people around us that supported us and encouraged us through the process.