In this Q&A, the past president of an addiction counseling association talks candidly about stigma, career opportunities, telehealth, and the importance of collaborating with other professions.
Dr. Mita Johnson is a licensed professional counselor and served as recent president of NAADAC: The Association for Addiction Professionals and is now their treasurer. For nearly a decade, she has been a faculty member at Adtalem’s Walden University. There she was a course lead for psychopharmacology and created a professional development track in addictions for the MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, which is one of the largest programs of its kind in the U.S.
How did you get started in addictions counseling?
I have a biology degree. I love science, and the science behind addiction is really important to understanding addiction, because the body gets engaged, not just the brain.
I was working as a lay counselor and went back to school about 25 years ago because I wanted to put some education behind what I was doing in the community.
When I was in my counseling program, I had absolutely no addictions classes. Then I went to my internship and practicum, and every single client who came into my session directly or indirectly had addictions within their story. So that was one thing that really propelled me to look at how addictions counseling is different.
The other thing is that the clients I was working with kept telling me they needed a safe place where they wouldn’t be judged, misunderstood, and labeled. I wanted to have a space where clients wouldn’t feel abandoned or rejected.
How does that stigma affect addiction care?
Unfortunately, I still run into counselors and medical professionals who say, “I don’t work with those people.” I’m like, who are those people? We’re all those people. We all have things we’ve struggled with in our lives. This isn’t those people versus us. We’re helpers. We’re here to help people. That’s where my passion comes from.
What is the most important thing you want people to understand about addiction?
I want people to understand that no one woke up this morning saying they want to be addicted to anything. No one wants to be addicted to heroin, fentanyl, alcohol, gambling, sex, shopping, or any drug or behavior.
Too many healthcare providers seem to blame people for their addiction when in fact it was a tool in their toolbox to help them deal with something in their life that was feeling very unbearable. I want to get away from the stigma around mental health and addiction. How is that still possible today that we are thinking about addiction as a moral issue or that it’s just a willpower issue?
How important is a multidisciplinary approach to addiction with support from nurses, doctors, social workers, and other professionals?
Providers across professions are being challenged every day with addiction. I’m so grateful for multidisciplinary care teams because we know it’s more than a biological disorder and we know that it’s more than a mental health disorder. Our clients need all of us working together.
Addiction is a co-occurring disorder. Rarely does addiction fly by itself. It flies with medical disorders and mental health disorders, either as a result of the addiction or as the primary diagnosis and then addiction as a way to cope with it. We are really pushing multidisciplinary care teams across the country, because we know it’s more.
What are the opportunities for people interested in working in addictions counseling?
In counseling, and specifically addictions counseling, we can use people everywhere: community mental health centers, hospitals, treatment agencies, group counseling practices, and private practice. We’re in junior highs, high schools, and colleges. It’s amazing to me how many people in nursing homes have an addiction.
We also volunteer. We have support groups in churches. We have peer mentors who are people with lived experience who can share their story and walk alongside somebody who has an addiction. There are so many avenues for getting involved.
As counselors, we have an opportunity to make a difference, not only with the person sitting in front of us, but with other clinicians, professional associations, credentialing boards, healthcare insurance, and treatment agencies. They all need to see the person that we’re seeing and understand that what we do makes a difference, and we need to bring down barriers. That’s a social change movement. What I truly appreciate about Walden University is the fact that we are thinking about social change on an ongoing basis.
You are certified in teletherapy. How does that help with healthcare access and health equity?
The minute you’re in rural areas of our states, healthcare access becomes very difficult. We don’t have providers in these rural areas, unfortunately.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were saying that if the client isn’t sitting directly in front of us, how could we possibly help them? Once the pandemic hit, we all got thrown into the world of telehealth almost overnight. What did we learn? Telehealth works.
It brings access to care that would otherwise not be available to many of our clients. I think about our clients in rural areas. I think about our older clients. Clients who are in restricted environments. But then I also think about clients who have a lot of stigma about counseling or they’re afraid to go to the counselor’s office. Telehealth has been a powerful tool to bring counseling to the client.
I love teletherapy because I’ve been able to see clients from all over the state who I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. I have a military member who was in Afghanistan, and he was willing to get up at three o'clock in the morning while he was deployed to do sessions with me. I would never have been able to do that with him if we hadn’t had telehealth as an option.
What advice do you have for counselors interested in providing telehealth?
What you really have to do with clients is take the time to get to know them and let them know a little bit about you. Really look at what they need and what they don’t need. Always ask them, “how’s the telehealth piece working for you?” Because at the end of the day, if it’s not working for them, then we need to look for other options. You can do hybrid therapy where sometimes you meet live, sometimes you meet online.
We’ve also learned that with telehealth and telesupervision it takes a little longer to establish therapeutic alliance. We need to take a little bit more time to get to know the client and for them to get to know us.
For more information, email the Adtalem Global Communications Team: adtalemmedia@adtalem.com.
