Predisposing, process, and outcome codes reveal experiences and contexts that influence this development in students, educators, and counselors.

Interstate licensure portability has become a significant issue for US healthcare providers. Healthcare compacts have emerged as a promising solution to facilitate interstate licensure portability for many healthcare specialties while maintaining individual state autonomy.

To address portability issues, the Counseling Compact creates an opportunity for counselors to have privileges to practice in states that have passed compact legislation.

Despite the growth of telemental health offerings, issues of licensing portability continue to create barriers to broader access to mental health care.

The researchers noted that the barriers that stood between integration and teaching of religion and spirituality within training programs rested on various dynamics, such as lack of faculty knowledge, faculty disinterest, seeing religion/spirituality as simply cultural identity, and faculty bias and resistance.

There has been growing attention to mental health clients' religion and spirituality (RS) as a critical component to be addressed in treatment across helping professions.

This study explores the ethical dilemmas and professional identity challenges faced by mental health professionals who integrate spirituality into their therapeutic practice.

All participants agreed that religion and spirituality can be considered an element that supports the client's autonomy rather than an area of conflict in therapy. These findings suggest a therapeutic balance is possible where ethical boundaries are maintained but religious/spiritual values are not completely excluded.

Professional organizations integrated the importance of professional identity in training, higher education, and professional development (CACREP, 2009). Eventually, some state licensing boards began to require a counselor identity that was based on CACREP standards for individuals to become licensed professional counselors.

The American Counseling Association (ACA) and affiliated organizations such as the National Board of Certified Counselors and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) made a commitment to unify counselors in a shared professional identity

The development of a professional identity as a counselor is the result of training, practice, and integration into a community of professional counselors and is defined as the synthesis of personal and professional behaviors, values, ethics, and worldview.