Clinical Social Workers are the largest provider of behavioral healthcare in America. Like any other true profession—medicine, psychology, the law, etc.—Clinical Social Work requires mastery of an extensive body of knowledge that can only be attained through the rigors of graduate education. It also requires mastery of a set of skills that are developed in the process of intense, extended, post-graduate training while engaged in actual practice. This combination of education, training, and experience is the means by which clinical social workers achieve competence in addressing bio-psychosocial problems and disorders.
Clinical Social Work is distinct from the field of generic social work as well as from psychology and psychiatry. Its practitioners are state-licensed separately based on unique capabilities and values, person-in-environment perspective, graduate-level education, and specialized post-graduate training. Clinical Social Work stands on its own as a highly respected profession, recognized as such by every state in the U.S., the insurance and employee assistance industries, medical centers and hospitals, and the Department of Defense and other federal entities.
