Mental Health and Career Counseling in State College
Supporting the mental health of students, professionals, and entrepreneurs, and their families as they work through the challenges, decisions, and transitions of work and schooling.
Mental Health & Career Counseling
Strategically integrating work/school and mental health topics to help clients explore new ideas about themselves, their careers, and how wellness in one area supports wellness in the other.
Assessment Tools
Assessment tools allow clients to explore and face their own career interests, skills, and values, along with personality and mental health traits that could impact life choices.
Group Counseling
Discussing common challenges, perceptions, and methods in a therapeutic setting with a counselor and other clients could create new meaning for personal experiences.
Joshua A. Kirby, MEd, NCC, CCC
Counselor Resident (Supervised)
We each are journeying a long arc of discovery about who we are, what we can do, how we relate, where we are valued, and why we matter. Our career and education help us chart the course of our identity, and they can create fantastic side trips, unexpected detours, and unfortunate layovers. I work with clients who are navigating the challenges, decisions, and transitions related to their changing landscape of work and school. Like a colorful sunrise, I am energized to work with clients who hope to explore and understand the options for mental wellness available to them as learners, professionals, entrepreneurs, and self-advocates.
My Expertise
Academic & Education Issues
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No matter the school or training center, no matter the level, degree, or certification, being a student can be challenging and stressful. We can discuss your situation and explore your options for making the experience better.
Anxiety
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Work, school, and life in general can be sources of anxiety. We can explore triggers and treatments to help you regain control.
Coping Skills
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Healthy coping skills allow for an opportunity to reduce the effects of life’s stressors, and we can explore the skills that help you most.
Depression
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Work and schooling are integral components of personal identity, which also links those environments to depressive symptoms in people who are prone to depression. Let’s learn more about the depression and how it is linked to other facets of life.
Grief
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Grief is much more than sadness about a loved one’s death. Grief can be a part of work or school environments and can affect our perceptions and performance in our professional and student life.
Life Coaching
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Career counseling strategically employs both traditional mental health counseling techniques and contemporary career coaching perspectives to provide clients with credible and effective options for their future selves.
Peer Relationships
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How we get along with others can greatly impact our experience at work and school. We can analyze the health of your relationships and better understand how to relate effectively with others while not sacrificing personal values.
School Issues
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Education and training are important avenues to a future self we can be satisfied with, and students/trainees in these settings can experience great pressures, distorted perceptions of reality, and a questioning of values.
Self Esteem
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Work and school settings are all about performance, and with performance comes evaluation, which can ultimately impact self-esteem. We can discover whether your beliefs about yourself and your work are helpful to your overall feelings for life satisfaction.
Testing and Evaluation
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Using online and paper tools to test, assess, evaluate, and better understand who we are, the strengths we have, and the potential avenues for fulfillment in our studies and work.
Workplace Issues
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Work settings can influence our wellness, and yet we don’t always know how to best frame our work and our relationships in our workplace.
My Approach & Values
With counseling and assessment, I aim to help clients work through issues related to career, education, and mental health aspects of their lives, including: stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, career or major exploration/indecision, toxic workplaces, bad bosses/coworkers, workplace bullying, forced career change, job loss, and end-of-career transition.
I guide our counseling relationship to be a custom-tailored source of support, honesty, and strategy for all stages of students and professionals, across all professions, ages, races, and nationalities, for both short- and long-term counseling intervention. If your career or education itinerary isn’t going as planned, contact me to aid your navigation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you accept insurance?
AutumnSpring Counseling is a private pay (self pay) fee-for-service practice that does not accept insurance. Please review our Fees page for more detail on costs and payment methods.
Are you accepting new clients?
Yes, Joshua Kirby is currently accepting new clients. Prospective clients are encouraged to read the Career & Mental Health Counseling page and Joshua’s Psychology Today profile to appreciate his areas of specialization and the clientele he best serves.
Fellow health providers will find useful information on our Referrals page.
Are you licensed?
Joshua Kirby is working toward licensure under the supervision of an experienced and qualified supervisor. Licensure in Pennsylvania requires 3,000 hours of supervised practice. Joshua earned the Master of Education in Counselor Education degree from Penn State University is a Nationally Certified Counselor and a Certified Career Counselor.
Joshua’s supervisor is Brad Carmichael, MSEd, LPC, (Pennsylvania license number PC009176), who also practices in State College. Brad can be contacted by calling 757-793-8325 or emailing bcarmichael@therapyemail.com.
Where are you located?
AutumnSpring Counseling’s office is in The Allenway Building on South Allen Street in State College. See the Location page for details about the location, transit, parking, waiting, and other arrival information. Visitor parking spaces are available on a first come first serve basis, with plenty of streetside parking as the next option.
Do you offer online/teletherapy services?
Yes, online appointments are available by prior arrangement. Connection information will be provided prior to the appointment. We use a HIPAA-compliant video platform that clients can access via computer or mobile device. Online clients are expected to situate themselves in a private and secure location with adequate Internet bandwidth that will allow them to speak normally and freely.
What are your COVID-19 public health precautions?
AutumnSpring Counseling intends to make available face-to-face counseling sessions until they become impossible to offer legally or safely. Online sessions are currently available at the client’s request. In the office, client’s are scheduled so that adequate sanitization can take place between clients, and so that clients do not overlap in the waiting room. The office is large enough to allow for 6- to 10+ feet of physical distancing between client and counselor.
What are your fees?
The full fee schedule for our services is provided on our Fees page. We prefer payment cards (credit, debit, charge), and will also accept personal checks and cash.
Do you offer group counseling?
Yes, AutumnSpring Counseling has a group counseling space right in its primary office location. Groups are formed according to specific themes throughout the year. Group counseling requires a commitment to the group by each member-client. Learn more by visiting our Group Counseling page.
What assessments and evaluations do you offer?
Joshua is approved to deliver and interpret a broad variety of mental health and career assessment, evaluation, and profiling tools. Just a few specific examples include the Strong Interest Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, various depression and anxiety scales, work values and workplace assessment profiles, and a variety of scaling methods for sources of stress and anxiety. He is continually updating his library, and his clients’ needs contribute to the tool selection. Many of these assessments incur an administration and interpretation fee in addition to a session fee. Learn more on our Assessment Tools page.
What type of people do you work with?
Overall, the most common characteristic across all of AutumnSpring Counseling’s clients (especially those seeing Joshua Kirby) is a connection of career or educational concerns to chief concern of the client. If work or school contributes to the feelings you feel and challenges you face, you will be right at home with AutumnSpring. Joshua sees clients from high school age through retirement, across all nationalities, ethnicities, races, genders, industries, and professional roles.
Will you travel to my business/organization?
Certain package services for businesses and organizations, such as individual and group counseling, assessment tool administration, and workplace climate evaluation, are available to be contracted for on-site delivery. The best way to discuss opportunities such as these is to write to Joshua directly at josh@autumnspring.co.
Do you rent space to fellow providers?
Yes, our office has evening and weekend availability for our individual and group spaces. Please review the Rentals page and reach-out!