Early-Career Mental Health Professionals’ Preparedness to Counsel Survivors of Sex Trafficking

Author: Mays, Cheri; Field, Thomas & Ng, Kok-Mun

Abstract: Early career mental health professionals (professionals who have paraprofessional and pre-licensed status including graduate students and independently licensed mental health professional status who had been in practice five or fewer years) are likely to encounter survivors of sex trafficking in community agencies and private practices, yet little is known about how best to prepare professionals to provide counseling services to survivors of sex trafficking. This correlational, cross-sectional study examined the extent to which stage of practice, professional exposure to sex trafficking, personal exposure to sex trafficking, counselor self-efficacy, client-specific counselor self-efficacy, and positive attitude toward survivors of sex trafficking predicted early career mental health professionals’ preparedness to provide services to survivors of sex trafficking. Almost all predictors were significantly correlated with preparedness at the zero-order level, yet when combined in a linear regression analysis, client-specific counselor self-efficacy and positive attitudes toward survivors of sex trafficking were the only significant unique predictors of variance in preparedness. Findings are discussed with implications for counselor practice and training.

Keywords: counselor preparedness, counselor self-efficacy, early career mental health professionals, sex-trafficking, vignettes