Mental Health Professionals: Joanna Williams, MA, LPCC

Joanna Williams, MA, LPCC

Joanna earned a Master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from The University of Akron and is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor. Joanna has experience working with individuals, couples and families from various backgrounds and across the lifespan. She especially enjoys working with couples and helping them find new ways to relate to one another and better their relationship.

What Does It Mean to be a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor?

Good question! In a nutshell, in the late 1980's, the State of Ohio formed a governing board to regulate the practices of counseling and social work. They set standards professionals have to meet as far as taking graduate coursework, getting supervised in the field, meeting ethical standards and keeping up with new developments. These can be viewed at their website: www.cswmft.ohio.gov. Ohio is one of the most stringent states in regulating this field.

All of our counselors at Gentle Shepherd Counseling Center have either masters or doctoral degrees and have fulfilled the state's requirements for diagnosing and treating mental and emotional disorders. We have also had thousands of hours of experience while being supervised by someone who is already licenced before we earned our own licenses. And we all must continue our eduation by taking 30 hours of advanced training every two years.

What is unique about our counselors is that we have all had training on how to integrate our theology into psychology. We continue to work on this in our daily lives as well as in weekly team meetings. We are experts at looking at problems with the knowledge that the study of psychology affords through the lens of faith in God, meeting each client where he or she is on his or her own faith journey.