Over the last two years, the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) and NAADAC, the Association for Addiction Professionals, have met to talk about the role of professional associations in setting competency standards, as well as the need to address co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. NAADAC and AMHCA have complementary missions that are focused on helping our respective members provide the best clinical and wrap-around services in their communities. AMHCA and NAADAC are proud to announce our continued joint commitment to enhance and elevate clinical care in the areas of mental health and substance use disorders and increase advocacy efforts that support our providers.
Considering the high rate of co-occurring mental health, substance use, and addictive behavior disorders amongst those whom we serve in our communities, the collaboration between NAADAC and AMHCA provides an opportunity to create educational training experiences and products that ultimately improve services to our clients, their families, and their communities. Professionals who specialize in working with substance use and addictive behavior disorders complement clinical mental health counselors by building and supporting a multidisciplinary care team approach to the important work we do. AMHCA and NAADAC appreciate and want to commend the work of NAADAC and AMHCA's Presidents and Executive Directors, past and present, for their ongoing willingness to build a collaborative partnership.
We are very excited about the many opportunities before us and looking forward to seeing what we can achieve together.