An Exploration of the Site Supervision During Internship Experience for Clinical Mental Health Counseling Students

The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) study was to understand how CMHC students experience and create meaning of site supervision during internship under the new CACREP (2024) Standards. The bulk of the literature on this topic comes from allied social sciences and little research is available in the clinical mental health discipline. As such, there is a need to better understand this experience from the perspective of CMHC students. The study was grounded in interpretive phenomenology and used the rigorous IPA process to explore students’ lived experiences of supervision. I conducted a study using semi-structured interviews with eight participants enrolled in an internship class at a CACREP-accredited university. Data were analyzed using IPA’s seven-step process, including the double hermeneutic circle, to identify emergent themes. The results suggest that the supervisory relationship remains central to adequate site supervision. Additional factors, such as faculty supervision, site culture, developmental interventions, and a focus on the student, are also crucial components of site supervision. Further research on site supervision for clinical mental health master’s students could help fill the knowledge gap from the students’ perspective. Lastly, this work indicates a potential need to address multicultural concerns at the internship level to prepare clinical mental health counselors to serve the diverse needs of clients in the mental health field. Particularly, in those areas that have limited access to clinical mental health counselors.