Opportunities for undergraduate counseling internships will range from language intensive, locally driven, immersion focused, to student living centers, more independence and autonomy, and bigger cities. No matter where your comforts lie, you will have no problem finding great opportunities for mental health counseling internships!
You may be asking, “why intern abroad when I can intern domestically?” Great question! Here’s why you should put the intern in international: Spending time abroad, whether through travel, work, or study, opens up new doors to major transformational learning opportunities. Especially in the world of psychology and mental health, a person’s surroundings and the system in which they live heavily affects their lives. Taking the opportunity to learn about different populations in relation to their country’s history, their relationship with nature, and the acceptance and openness (or lack thereof) to mental health issues, will teach you a great deal about how to approach different situations in your own future career.
What a great way to learn what may work (or not) in your own practices, right? It’s kind of boring to do the same thing as everyone else, so completing counseling internships abroad will not only set you apart from your peers, it will also teach you so much about yourself and your professional goals. While mental health internship placements are going to vary drastically from program to program and country to country, the variety of options gives you the opportunity to find what will work best for you and your goals.
Learning to live and interact within the context of a new country, possibly with different languages, helps you to learn to better empathize, understand, and connect with people with different backgrounds, which is essential to counseling. Now remember, you are not setting out to solve another country’s set of problems, you are simply setting out to learn from a system different than your own! And learn (and intern) you shall.
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