I completed my clinical training and residency in Virginia and wish to voice my support for the current petition. I believe there are an overabundance of benefits to making this change in the rules given the need for clinical mental health professionals and relevant training opportunities across disciplines. There is a great deal of overlap among the licensed mental health professions and the differences become even less pronounced once individuals enter formal post-degree practice. In fact, I believe the mental health professional is only strengthened when training, consultation, and supervision occur across professional parties. It is this level of us-them mentality that has created power struggles between professions for far too long (The APA lobbying against the NASW lobbying against the ACA, etc). The most recent approval of LPCs to accept Medicare is an indication that we are moving away from outdated license-specific lobbying efforts in the government and toward creating more ways for the general public to access care. While this specific petition is about supervision and not insurance reimbursement, I believe doing away with such unnecessary rules at this level in the clinical training sets up new professionals to have a more impactful multidisciplinary approach to mental health care. I do not believe it is under the purview of the board to ensure that counselors are being supervised by counselors for the purposes of "professional identity development." Such advocacy efforts should be left up to organizations such as the American Counseling Association which can help counselors connect with counselors, and, more importantly, assist those counselors in better serving those who need our help.