Transfer Your Counseling License to Massachusetts: Reciprocity & Endorsement (2026)

Massachusetts has not enacted the Counseling Compact, so the planning is simple, if slower. There is no compact privilege to fall back on, including for telehealth: you cannot lawfully counsel a client located in Massachusetts until Massachusetts authorizes you, which for most counselors means a license from the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Allied Mental Health and Human Services Professions (Licensed Mental Health Counselor, LMHC) (check the notes below for any telehealth-only registration). Start the application before you need the income.

Massachusetts' independent counselor license is the Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC). 262 CMR 2.00 as amended 2026-10-09 (Mass. Register #1584) also defines a Licensed Supervised Mental Health Counselor, a supervised tier that is not covered here. 262 CMR 2.03(3) grants LMHC licensure by 'reciprocal recognition' to a holder of a mental health counselor license, certification or registration (or the equivalent, as determined by the Board) from another state or jurisdiction. The applicant submits a complete application, a final transcript meeting the 262 CMR 2.05 education requirements, a passing NCMHCE score, and written proof that the license has been in good standing for the three years before applying. The amended rule no longer states the earlier 'substantially equivalent standards' and '3 years of continuous full-time practice' conditions. It does not list clinical field experience for reciprocity applicants, so the 3,360-hour post-master's experience (262 CMR 2.07) is not re-counted. The education standard is still checked through transcripts. This is credential-based endorsement, not full reciprocity, and there is no published reciprocal-state list. Statutory authority is M.G.L. c. 112, ss. 163-172. Massachusetts has NOT enacted the Counseling Compact. compact_member and compact_status are assembler-provided. mass.gov returned HTTP 403 to all automated requests on 2026-09-27, so the regulation and Board documents were read from Internet Archive captures of the official mass.gov URLs. On 2026-10-29 mass.gov again returned 403. The amended regulation was read from an Internet Archive capture of the official PDF taken 2026-10-10, and the eligibility facts above were corrected to it. The fees ($117 + $155), the CORI and domestic and sexual violence training items, the license-verification step and the processing note come from the Board's application guide and triage instructions, which predate the amendment and have no capture within 30 days, so they were NOT re-read. last_verified therefore stays 2026-09-27; re-confirm those items against the Board's post-amendment application materials.