Professional activities related to clinical mental health counselling appear to be the exclusive domain of psychologists in the country of colombia (Ardila, 2010). This field has an established history of providing mental health treatment and a well-developed professional association, the Colombian College of Psychologists (http://www.colpsic.org.co/), and legal recognition from the government. No research was located identifying professionals other than psychologists providing clinical counselling services to the citizens of the country; however, there is a solid tradition of delivering vocational guidance and related career counselling activities within the educational system of Colombia (Brunal, 2017).
Brunal (2017) states that no professional title of career counsellor exists in Colombia, but a position of school counsellor does exist throughout public and some private schools, mostly focused in primary and secondary grades from first to ninth grade. These school counsellors come from various undergraduate preparation backgrounds (e.g., education, psychology, social work, occupational therapy), but all are seen as teachers within their schools who have additional, or in some cases exclusive, duties of addressing the career, personality development, and educational needs of students. In 1974, the Government of Colombia via Resolution No. 1084, established “the ratio of school counselors to students at 1:250” (Brunal, 2017, p. 2), yet this ratio has never been enforced and by 2016 in the city of Bogata, for example, the actual ratio was 1:750 (N= 1,200 counsellors to roughly 900,00 students). Additionally, school counsellors infrequently exist in many rural and even some urban schools. As of 2016 there appeared to be a total of 1,892 “guidance teachers” in Colombia (Brunal, 2017, p. 3).
Although the National Ministry of Education has developed expectations for the inclusion of career counselling to be addressed within the school system of Colombia, the reality appears that career guidance is treated more like an educational topic offered by various teachers who have a diverse range of specialized graduate training in some common career counselling core areas, but most received advanced training in clinical psychology, social sciences, humanities, educational psychology, or occupational therapy building upon their undergraduate training (Brunal, 2017). Accordingly, the activities these school counsellors focus on are often influenced by their original field of study, with educational psychologists possibly taking an “academic or behavioral approach to students and teachers” or those trained in clinical psychology taking a more psychotherapeutic method to their duties, for example (Brunal, 2017, p. 7).