Counselors increasingly encounter clients describing exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, diminished emotional capacity, social disconnection, financial worry, information overload, and distress related to social and political uncertainty. These experiences are often conceptualized separately as anxiety, burnout, chronic stress, loneliness, or attentional difficulty. This presentation asks whether some may also reflect a broader “adaptation gap”: a mismatch between rapidly accelerating technological, informational, economic, and social environments and comparatively stable human needs for attention, recovery, connection, agency, and belonging. Drawing from research on chronic stress, burnout, social connection, financial strain, digital stress, political polarization, cognitive offloading, and emerging human-AI interaction, the session will critically examine evidence both supporting and challenging this framework. Technology and AI will be considered as potential sources of both cognitive burden and cognitive relief. Participants will explore implications for counseling assessment, case conceptualization, psychoeducation, prevention, and advocacy across clinical, school, college, career, and community settings. The session emphasizes an evidence-informed, nonpartisan, and nonpathologizing approach to understanding distress within rapidly changing social environments.
Many people have questions about the recently published updates to the LPC rules, the Counseling Compact, and other issues related to our role as LPCs. Join Eric Ashmore, Executive Director of the Board of Behavioral Health Licensure (BBHL) and LPC representatives on the Board as they share information related to these and other issues and answer your questions.
Think you know counseling? Put your knowledge to the test at the OACES Academic Bee, an engaging and competitive event bringing graduate counseling programs together for a friendly battle of knowledge, ethics, teamwork, and critical thinking.
Teams of 3–4 graduate counseling students with a faculty sponsor will represent their counseling programs as they advance through three elimination rounds. The competition begins with general counseling knowledge, progresses to the ACA Code of Ethics, and concludes with a final challenge in which remaining teams receive an ethical dilemma and deliver a 10-minute analysis and response.
More than a test of what students know, the OACES Academic Bee challenges future counselors to think quickly, collaborate effectively, apply ethical principles, and communicate their clinical and professional reasoning. The event also creates an opportunity for counseling students and faculty from programs across Oklahoma to connect, build community, and celebrate excellence in counselor preparation.
And, of course, there are bragging rights—and cash prizes for the top three teams!
The OK Mental Health Policy Panel Presentation will cover topics related to recent and upcoming policies impacting mental health in Oklahoma from experts. This presentation will include Bradley Horn, LPC, GRC Chair; Bobby Stem, J.D., OCA Lobbyist; Brittany Hayes, J.D, VP of Policy at Healthy Minds Policy Initiative, and Kelly Roberts, PhD, LMFT, Policy Analyst with Healthy Minds Policy Initiative. The main focus of this presentation will be recent proposed legislation from 2026 legislative session, current and upcoming interim studies impacting mental health in OK, ways to engage policymakers effectively, and the landscape of mental health policy in OK.
This interactive exploration will dive into the real-world gray areas of counseling ethics. Rather than simply reviewing what the Code says, participants will step into the counselor’s role and work through challenging scenarios-- choosing from artificial intelligence, veteran concerns, rural dual relationships, multicultural stigma and misdiagnosis, or counselor ethics around neurodivergence. Through discussion and collaborative problem-solving, participants will consider competing perspectives, examine context and culture, and develop practical responses to complex situations. A shared ethical decision-making framework will help participants move from “What does the Code say?” to “What should I actually do?”—and why?
