Rider’s clinical mental health counseling program provides the foundational knowledge and training for aspiring counselors to obtain licensure and enter rewarding careers within the clinical mental health field. Learn from our faculty experts who possess diverse experience and gain practical experience at qualified field placement sites.

Our 60-credit program blends traditional classroom learning alongside student participation in at least 700 hours of counseling fieldwork in a clinical mental health setting. Courses emphasize active learning, case examples and personal exploration to build self-awareness. Fieldwork supervision is intensive, with individualized student/supervisor meetings with at least two professionals: the supervisor on-site and the faculty supervisor at Rider.

Students in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program all take the same 36-credits of core courses and 9 credits of fieldwork. Students not enrolled in the DMT concentration take 15-credits of coursework in: addictions, advanced psychopathology, and two electives from the program’s diverse range of electives (play therapy, disordered eating, trauma, creativity). Students enrolled in the DMT concentration do not have electives and take 15-credits of coursework in DMT.