Faculty Directory
Aaron Norton, Ph.D.
He earned his Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision, M.A. in Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling and B.A. in Psychology from the ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ.
Since 2013, Norton has served as a faculty member at USF, while maintaining a diverse clinical and supervisory career spanning community mental health, correctional programs, public health, residential substance use treatment, vocational rehabilitation and private practice since 2000.
Norton serves on the Ethics Committee of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, co-chairs an international counseling taskforce for the International Association for Counselling, chairs the Government Relations Committee of the Florida Mental Health Counselors Association and helped develop the Florida Certification Board’s Certified Telehealth Practitioner (CTP) credential.
Research Interests
- Bias in the counseling profession, particularly how counselors’ political ideologies influence clinical decision-making.
- The intersection of counseling and technology, with a focus on telehealth, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
- Forensic evaluation practices within the counseling field.
Publications
Tan, T.X. & Norton, A.L. (in press). US clinical mental health counselors' responses to requests for emotional support animal letters. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.
Norton, A.L. (in press). Considerations for the use of generative artificial intelligence in the counseling profession. Rehabilitation Research, Policy, and Education.
Norton, A.L., Tan, T.X., & Chen, A.Z. (2025). Clinical mental health counselors' political ideology, political party affiliation, and treatment approaches to clients with a history of abortion. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 47(2), 150-168.
Norton, A.L., Chen, A.Z., & Tan, T.X. (2022). Firearms in clients' homes: Role of clinical mental health counselors' political beliefs and treatment objectives. Psychotherapy and Politics International, 20(3), 1-18.
American Mental Health Counselors Association. (2021). Forensic evaluation standards and competencies. In AMHCA standards for the practice of clinical mental health counseling (pp. 37-40). AMHCA.
Norton, A.L. (2021). Political ideologies, political party affiliation, and treatment decisions of clinical mental health counselors (Publication No. 28411261) [Doctoral dissertation, ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ]. ProQuest Dissertation and Theses database.
Davis, E. S., Norton, A., & Chapman, R. (2020). Counselors’-in-training perceptions of using music for theoretical conceptualization training. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 15(4), 443–456.
Davis, E. S. & Norton, A. & Chapman, R. (2019). Using music for case conceptualization: Looking through an Adlerian lens. The Journal of Individual Psychology 75(2), 156-170.
Norton, A.L., & Tan, T.X. (2019). The relationship between licensed mental health Counselors’ political ideology and counseling theory preference. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 89(1), 86-94.
Tan, T.X., Smith, L.S., & Norton, A.L. (2017). Adoption of Black children by White parents in heterosexual and homosexual relationships: Exploring mental health trainees’ explicit and implicit attitudes. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 29(3), 233-251.
