The American Counseling Association (ACA) has announced a groundbreaking development in the landscape of professional mental health services with the launch of the Counseling Compact, an interstate agreement designed to facilitate licensed professional counselors’ ability to practice seamlessly across state boundaries. As of late September 2025, Arizona and Minnesota have initiated the process of granting practice privileges under this compact, with numerous additional states poised to implement their participation in the near future. This unprecedented step is poised to transform professional counseling practice, especially in regions historically underserved by mental health professionals.
The Counseling Compact represents an innovative legislative framework developed through a significant collaborative effort involving ACA, the National Center for Interstate Compacts, and a wide network of counseling professionals across the United States. The ACA has devoted nearly $2 million in resources toward the development and promotion of this compact, reflecting the organization’s commitment to advancing the counseling profession and expanding access to mental health services. The involvement of thousands of counselors who invested extensive personal and professional efforts to secure legislative approval demonstrates the compact’s broad support and the perceived critical need for such a collaborative agreement.
At the core of this compact is a mutual recognition model akin to the system governing driver’s licenses among states. Participating states recognize the professional licensure credentials of counselors who meet uniform eligibility requirements, thereby granting them the privilege to practice regardless of physical state borders. This harmonization is particularly significant because historically, professional counseling licensure has been highly fragmented, with states enforcing diverse, and often conflicting, requirements for education, training, examination, and regulatory oversight. This fragmentation has severely hindered counselors’ professional mobility and complicated service delivery in the digital age’s telehealth environment.
The technical foundations of the Counseling Compact involve establishing standardized licensure criteria that ensure the competency and professionalism of participating counselors while maintaining rigorous consumer protection measures. These uniform standards cover educational qualifications, supervised clinical experience, examination requirements, and continuing professional development. Furthermore, the Compact infrastructure includes mechanisms for interstate coordination, such as a shared licensure database and an oversight commission responsible for compliance, dispute resolution, and ongoing adaptation of the agreement to evolving professional and technological realities.
One of the most transformative aspects of the compact lies in its potential to close the widely documented mental health service gaps in rural and remote areas across the United States. Many rural communities face critical shortages of licensed mental health professionals due to geographic isolation and economic constraints. By enabling counselors to practice remotely—especially via telehealth—under a standardized interstate framework, the compact dramatically enhances these communities’ access to qualified counseling services. This expanded connectivity is poised to have far-reaching positive effects on population mental health outcomes, reducing barriers related to provider availability and appointment wait times.
Significantly, the compact also addresses the particular challenges faced by military families, including professional counselors who are military spouses. Frequent relocations necessitated by military life have historically forced counselor spouses to undergo burdensome and time-consuming relicensing processes in new jurisdictions. The compact expedites licensure portability, allowing these professionals to maintain continuity in their careers without interruption or redundancy in credentialing processes. This is expected to improve both job stability for military families and mental health care availability in military communities.
As of this announcement, a total of thirty-eight states, alongside the District of Columbia, have ratified the Counseling Compact. These states span diverse regions of the country from the Southeast and Midwest to the West Coast and Northeast, reflecting wide-ranging legislative engagement and acceptance. This rapid adoption signals a paradigm shift in how states conceptualize and collaborate on professional licensure and mental health delivery, setting a precedent that could inspire similar interstate compacts in other health professions.
From a technical perspective, the implementation of the compact streamlines licensure in two critical ways: it removes the duplicative licensure application procedures for counselors practicing in multiple states and significantly reduces processing times for counselors relocating to new member states. This system not only enhances administrative efficiency but also ensures the protection of the public through shared disciplinary actions and coordinated regulatory oversight among compact member states. Participating regulatory boards are interconnected, facilitating real-time information exchange on licensure status, violations, or disciplinary measures.
Moreover, the Counseling Compact is designed with the flexibility to adapt to the evolving landscape of mental health care and counseling modalities. As telehealth continues to rise in prominence, especially post-pandemic, the compact’s provisions ensure that professional counselors can meet clients where they are geographically, without regulatory confusion or legal uncertainties. This legal modernization reflects a broader trend of regulatory innovation aimed at increasing healthcare accessibility and integrated service delivery.
Lynn Linde, EdD, ACA’s Chief of Professional Practice and project lead for the Counseling Compact, emphasized the historic nature of this initiative, describing it as the most significant transformation in professional counseling in over two decades. The initiative’s fruition after years of dedicated strategic planning, advocacy, and negotiation highlights the necessity of comprehensive cooperative frameworks to address complex regulatory challenges and promote public welfare through improved mental health service access.
The ACA President Elsa Soto Leggett, PhD, LPC-S, RPT-S, CSC, underscored the compact’s critical role in meeting the mental health exigencies of the contemporary American population, noting particularly its impact on underserved rural populations where professional counseling access is most limited. The compact’s capacity to expand access to millions of Americans living in shortage areas represents a vital step toward addressing longstanding disparities in mental health treatment infrastructure.
For professionals and communities alike, the Counseling Compact marks a new era of licensure efficiency and clinical service delivery. The uniformity and mutual recognition embedded in the compact diminish licensure barriers, enabling a more mobile, flexible, and responsive counseling workforce. As states continue to ratify and implement the compact, the mental health service landscape in the United States is set to experience a substantial enhancement in both reach and quality, profoundly benefiting counselors and the millions they serve.
The ACA continues to provide resources and support for counselors navigating this new framework, including detailed guidance on eligibility, enrollment processes, and the compact’s operational logistics. Interested parties can find extensive information on the ACA website and additional explanatory material via multimedia interviews with project leaders, furthering transparency and community engagement in this transformative development.
Subject of Research: Professional counseling licensure and interstate practice facilitation
Article Title: The Counseling Compact: Transforming Access to Mental Health Care Across State Lines
News Publication Date: September 30, 2025
Web References: https://www.counseling.org/advocacy/counseling-compact, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6jdLyXKrx4
Keywords: Mental health, Legislation, Rural populations, Health and medicine, Human health, Behavioral psychology, Cognitive psychology, Clinical psychology
