Marriage and Family Therapy

MFT Main Track

Many MFTs enter the field to help people in general. This MFT option is for the student who wants to get the broadest training the program has to offer. While it does not include a Specialization or Focused Electives, students will still receive introductory training in Play Therapy and Integrated Behavioral Healthcare on top of all core academic courses.

Play Therapy Specialization

Play therapy is an empirically grounded therapeutic approach where clients use the natural medium of play and toys as tools to express themselves. As children's experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important vehicle for them to know and accept themselves and others. 

While pursuing an M.MFT degree at Lipscomb, you may choose a specialization in play therapy, a six-hour training track structured to equip you with knowledge, personal experience and practical application of play therapy and expressive arts techniques. You will learn how to leverage play therapy to foster the mental health and development of children, adults and families. The play therapy courses are held as weekend intensives in Nashville, TN. Optional, additional training opportunities to earn training hours toward becoming a Registered Play Therapist are also available throughout a student’s time in the program.

MFT Focused Electives: Integrated Behavioral Healthcare

This option of my focused electives is perfect for students who are interested in working in a healthcare setting and as a member of an interdisciplinary treatment team. The focused electives include a course in Integrated Behavioral Healthcare as well as three, one-credit Interprofessional Education (IPE) courses in collaboration with Vanderbilt University Medical School, UT Knoxville Social Work (Nashville campus), Lipscomb University Social Work and other collaborators. The MFT Program can currently support 12 students in the Integrated Behavioral Healthcare focused electives each year.

MFT Focused Electives: Thesis 

This option of focused electives is for the student whose career path includes doctoral work after completion of the master’s degree and consists of a 63-hour degree plan. Thesis focused electives include two additional courses in statistics (i.e., Statistics I & Statistics II) as well as two thesis courses (i.e., Thesis I and II). The student will graduate with a completed research thesis and have basic research skills in literature review, psychometrics, data collection, research methods writing, data analysis, data interpretation, and research writing. The MFT Program can support approximately 4 students in the Thesis focused electives each year.

Capstone: Theory of Change

As a capstone project, students write a Theory of Change (TOC) paper. The TOC is an integrative culmination of all learning in the program into a coherent articulation of how students conceptualize and perform their practice of marriage and family therapy.

Clinical & Supervision Hours Requirements

Students in our MFT programs are required to accomplish a minimum of 300 direct client contact hours with 100 of those hours being relational client contact hours (e.g. couple therapy, family therapy). In Tennessee, 300 direct client contact hours is all that is required in order to pursue licensure as a marriage and family therapist after graduation. However, in other states (at least 10 at last count), 500 or more hours of direct client contact are required. Therefore, we strongly recommend doing whatever it takes to graduate with over 500 hours of direct client contact. The national exam website has information on state practicum requirements in their “Licensure Resources” section. For the most up-to-date information, we recommend looking directly at state board information on practicum requirements for MFT licensure.

In order to graduate, students must receive at least 100 hours of supervision from an AAMFT Approved Supervisor or AAMFT Approved Supervisor Candidate, including at least one hour of supervision from an AAMFT Approved Supervisor/Candidate each week they are seeing clients (i.e., exceptions can be made for holidays and extenuating circumstances). A minimum of 50 hours of supervision must utilize observable data (e.g., live observation, session video). Supervision can be individual (i.e., one supervisor with 1-2 supervisees) or group (i.e., one supervisor and 8 or fewer supervisees). Over the course of their time in the program, students should maintain a 5:1 client contact to supervision hour ratio. The program provides all of the required approved supervision hours.

Nashville

Marriage and family therapists engage with everyone with respect, compassion, humility and fairness, and with an appreciation for cultural diversity and difference. As a program, we operate our own sliding fee scale clinic, the Lipscomb Family Therapy Center, with the goal of making mental health and relationship care affordable for all individuals, couples and families in the Nashville community. In order to offer a diverse set of clinical experiences for our students, we have also partnered with other organizations for outside clinical placements. Some of our clinical partners have included:

• Agape
• Babb Center
• Branches Counseling Center
• Camelot Care Center, Inc.
• Cumberland Heights
• Daystar Counseling
• Hope Clinic for Women
• Insight Counseling Centers
• Mercy Community Healthcare Counseling Center
• Oasis Center
• Psyche
• The Refuge Center
• Sage Hill Counseling
• Tennessee Prison Outreach Ministry
• TN Voices for Children
• Youth Villages

In Lipscomb’s MMFT program, we strive to engage graciously with human systems in ways that result in healing, growth and increased resilience. We understand that individuals and human systems are unique and also an expression of the image of God. Therefore, it is our goal to treat everyone well, abiding by the Golden Rule. When people “do unto others as you would have them to do to you,” a shared cultural humility emerges allowing room for self-expression without fear of academic or social penalties. We are sensitive to the diverse nature of humanity and treat people and social systems with respect and appreciation in areas where differences and disagreements may be present.

Diversity spans the widest variety of individual and social system differences. These differences may be observed in:

• Age
• Ethnicity and Race
• Gender
• Physical Health and Ability
• Sexuality, Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation
• Cultural Assumptions
• Language and Communication Processes
• Political and Philosophical Ideology
• Religion, Spirituality and Faith
• Privilege and Power
• Socioeconomic Status
• Nationality and Immigration Status
• Family and Social Structure

We seek to foster a safe learning environment where honest expression and respect for differences may result in the desired outcome of academic communion. Since agreement is not a prerequisite for academic communion, diversity and disagreement are not only welcomed but invited. In our MMFT programs, we believe the presence of healthy, respectful disagreement promotes a more productive academic environment for everyone.

View the Nashville program Graduate Achievement Data Table and Program Diversity.