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National Counsellors Day: Recognising the Real Impact of Counselling in Australian Communities
AWARENESS STATEMENT / MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release
27 October 2026
The Australian Association of Mental Health Practitioners (AAMHP) welcomes Australia’s inaugural National Counsellors Day, held on 27 October 2026, as an opportunity to recognise the thousands of counsellors whose work takes place every day in consulting rooms, community organisations, schools, workplaces, health and disability services, family services and private practices across the country.
This year’s theme, “Recognising Real Impact: Supporting Australians to Thrive,” speaks to something that can sometimes be overlooked when we discuss Australia’s mental-health system. Much of mental-health care does not occur at the point of acute illness or crisis. It happens earlier and more quietly, through conversations in which somebody is given the time, safety and professional support to understand what is happening in their life and begin deciding what they want to do next.
Counsellors work with people experiencing grief, anxiety, relationship difficulties, family transitions, workplace pressures, trauma, loneliness, identity questions, financial stress, life changes and the many other experiences that can challenge human wellbeing. Sometimes that work sits alongside medical or specialist mental-health treatment. Sometimes counselling provides an early intervention before difficulties become more entrenched, and sometimes it offers a place to address problems that are painful and significant without necessarily being psychiatric illnesses.
AAMHP Chair Shane Warren said National Counsellors Day provides an important opportunity to recognise this distinctive place within the mental-health workforce.
“Counselling begins with a deceptively simple proposition: that being listened to carefully, without judgement and with professional skill can help people understand themselves, their relationships and the choices available to them. It is simple to describe, but good counselling is not simple work. It requires training, ethical judgement, reflective practice and the capacity to remain present with people when their lives are complicated.” [Shane Warren]
Shane Warren said the contribution of counsellors is particularly important in a mental-health system that needs multiple appropriate entry points rather than expecting every person experiencing distress to follow the same pathway.
“Not every person needs the same kind of intervention, and not every difficult period in a human life requires a diagnosis. A mature mental-health system needs specialist psychiatry and psychology, certainly, but it also needs counselling, psychotherapy, peer support, social and community services and practitioners who understand when they can help and when somebody needs to be referred elsewhere. The strength comes from having those pathways connected rather than competing with one another.” [Shane Warren]
A profession entering an important period of development
National Counsellors Day arrives at a significant time for counselling and psychotherapy in Australia.
In October 2025, the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing released the National Standards for Counsellors and Psychotherapists, establishing expectations across education and training, professional practice, ethics, competency, diversity and inclusion, and quality assurance. The Department has recognised counsellors and psychotherapists as playing an important role in supporting Australians across health, disability, education and community-service settings.
During 2026, the Government also consulted the sector about possible regulatory approaches for implementing those National Standards. These developments reflect growing recognition of counselling and psychotherapy within Australia’s broader mental-health workforce and the corresponding importance of clear professional expectations, public confidence and accountability.
AAMHP Secretary Susan Sandy said professional recognition needs to remain connected to professional responsibility.
“Recognition matters, but with recognition comes responsibility. People who seek counselling should be able to expect appropriately educated practitioners, ethical practice, ongoing professional development, supervision, clear boundaries and practitioners who understand both their competence and its limits.” [Susan Sandy]
“One of the strengths of counselling is its accessibility and its relational approach. Protecting that strength means continuing to build confidence in the profession through standards, accountability and a commitment to good practice.” [Susan Sandy]
AAMHP supports the ongoing development of clear national expectations for counsellors and psychotherapists and believes implementation should recognise the diversity of settings, qualifications and levels of practice that exist across the profession while maintaining meaningful protections for the public.
The work behind the conversation
Counselling is sometimes misunderstood because much of its work is conversational. From the outside, it can appear that a counsellor is simply “talking to someone”. Yet the therapeutic conversation involves far more than ordinary conversation.
Counsellors listen not only to what is being said but to patterns, assumptions, relationships, contradictions, strengths and possibilities. They work with boundaries and confidentiality, assess risk, recognise when referral or additional care is necessary, help people develop insight and support clients to identify changes that are realistic within the circumstances of their lives. Effective counselling requires practitioners to resist the temptation to take over somebody else’s decision-making while still bringing professional knowledge and structure to the work.
Susan Sandy said that balance is central to good counselling.
“People do not generally come to counselling because they need another person to tell them how to run their lives. They often come because something has become difficult to understand, carry or change. The counsellor’s task is to help create enough space for the person to think more clearly, recognise patterns, explore possibilities and make decisions that remain genuinely theirs.” [Susan Sandy]
That work can be particularly important when somebody feels unable to speak openly elsewhere. For some people the counselling room may be one of the few places where they can talk honestly about grief, relationships, sexuality, family conflict, fear, shame, uncertainty or the possibility that the life they are living no longer fits the life they want.
Counsellors need support too
National Counsellors Day should also remind us that the wellbeing of the mental-health workforce itself matters.
Many counsellors work in small organisations or private practice, while others work within education, disability, community services, employee assistance programs and multidisciplinary health environments. The work can involve repeated exposure to grief, trauma, family distress, suicide-related concerns and difficult human circumstances. Counsellors may also carry significant administrative, financial and professional responsibilities outside the consulting room.
Professional supervision, peer connection, continuing education, sustainable workloads and appropriate boundaries are therefore not optional extras. They form part of safe and sustainable practice.
Shane Warren said the helping professions can sometimes be particularly poor at recognising their own limits.
“There is a strange idea in parts of the helping professions that because we know something about wellbeing we should somehow be immune to exhaustion, grief or the impact of difficult work. We are not. A practitioner who takes supervision seriously, asks for consultation, maintains boundaries and seeks support when they need it is not demonstrating weakness; they are demonstrating professional maturity.” [Shane Warren]
This is especially relevant for counsellors working alone in private practice, where deliberate professional connection becomes essential. A strong profession is not simply a collection of individual practitioners. It requires communities of practice, supervision, professional standards and referral relationships that allow people to know when they need another perspective.
Recognising real impact
The inaugural National Counsellors Day invites Australians to recognise the impact counsellors are already making across the community. The official campaign encourages people to learn more about counselling and psychotherapy, recognise counsellors who have made a difference, share experiences of counselling and help reduce stigma around seeking support.
AAMHP welcomes that invitation because the impact of counselling is often most visible in changes that will never become headline statistics: somebody having a difficult conversation they had avoided for years, a grieving person discovering they do not have to rush their recovery, a couple learning to hear one another differently, a young person finding somewhere they can speak safely, or an overwhelmed worker beginning to recognise that something in their life needs to change.
Those outcomes may appear modest from the outside. For the person experiencing them, they can be life-changing.
National Counsellors Day should therefore be both a celebration and a reminder. We should recognise counsellors for the work they do while continuing to strengthen the standards, professional support and systems that allow that work to be done safely and well.
AAMHP congratulates counsellors across Australia on the inaugural National Counsellors Day and acknowledges the contribution of counsellors working across private practice, education, health, disability, workplaces, community services and the many other settings in which Australians seek support.
As the profession continues to develop, our task should not be to argue that counselling is the answer to every mental-health need. It is to ensure that counselling is recognised as one important, competent and connected part of a broader mental-health system capable of meeting people with the level and type of care they actually need.
That is how professional recognition becomes something more than a title. It becomes better access, stronger practice and better care for the communities we serve.
About National Counsellors Day
Thank you to the Australian Counsellling Association for bringing us the inaugural National Counsellors Day was held on 27 October 2026 under the theme “Recognising Real Impact: Supporting Australians to Thrive.” The initiative aims to recognise the contribution of counsellors across Australian communities, increase understanding of counselling and psychotherapy and encourage more open conversations about seeking mental-health support.
National Standards for Counsellors and Psychotherapists
The Australian Government released the National Standards for Counsellors and Psychotherapists on 13 October 2025. The Standards cover education and training, professional practice, ethics, competency, diversity and inclusion, and quality assurance. Consultation on regulatory approaches for implementation continued during 2026.
About AAMHP
The Australian Association of Mental Health Practitioners (AAMHP) represents and supports a broad community of mental-health and wellbeing practitioners and advocates for an accessible, appropriately qualified, diverse and connected Australian mental-health workforce.
Media Contact:
Shane Warren, Chair
Susan Sandy, Secretary
Philip Armstrong, CEO
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