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- Utah lawmakers are considering a bill to regulate unlicensed life coaches in mental health.
- The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mike McKell, aims to prevent conversion therapy on minors, which he said some life coaches have practiced.
- It expands mental health therapy definitions and creates an enforcement fund for oversight.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers are considering a bill to strengthen "guardrails" around the scope of who can practice certain mental health therapies and crack down on instances of so-called life coaches engaging in conversion therapy.
SB48, sponsored by Spanish Fork Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, expands the definition of mental health therapy and creates an enforcement fund to educate and train professionally licensed therapists, and investigate unprofessional and unlawful conduct.
The bill comes amid concerns that unlicensed life coaches are offering services similar to professional therapy. Unlike mental health professionals — who are licensed through the state's Division of Professional Licensing — anyone can call themselves a life coach with no qualifications.
McKell's bill adds "conveying an opinion as to the validity of an individual's established diagnosis" to the definition of mental health therapy.
"We want mental health professionals to do that, and we only want mental professionals to do that," he told the Senate Health and Human Services Committee Monday, adding that the bill would help "root out those that are practicing mental health without a license."
The bill passed unanimously out of the committee Monday, but McKell said he is working on changes to address conversion therapy, a widely discredited practice intended to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. Utah banned mental health therapists from practicing conversion therapy on children in 2023, but McKell said he recently learned that some life coaches are offering conversion therapy as a work-around to the ban.
"I think that should concern everybody in this room," he said. "It's banned in our state — we're not going to change that, but as we draw guardrails and try to protect our mental health industry against some of the weird stuff that we see with life coaching, that may come forward at another date."
Jessica Black, the legislative chairwoman of the Utah Mental Health Counselors Association, spoke in support of the bill and the proposed amendments to address conversion therapy. She said some life coaches may be working with licensed therapists — with the coach overseeing the conversion therapy with the child while the licensed professional only sees the parent.
"That's kind of how they're getting around this," Black said. "People are putting themselves out as licensed professionals, but if they harm someone, those people have no recourse."
Black said some life coaches advertise themselves as if they are licensed therapists, saying their practice is "deeply informed by my clinical experience and expertise" even while noting that their services are "not therapy, per se."
Sarah Stroup, with the Utah Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, spoke in support of the bill, saying it is also intended to "prevent bad actors in the mental health field from pivoting to life coach when they have faced disciplinary action."
SB48 now advances to the Senate floor.
