Arkansas Continuing Education Requirements for Mental Health Professionals

Arkansas, like a handful of neighboring states, combines counselors and marriage and family therapists under one board while regulating social work and psychology separately. If you’re searching for Arkansas continuing education requirements, one detail sets this state apart immediately: Arkansas is one of the only states that explicitly lets a national licensing exam substitute for CE hours during your renewal period. This guide breaks down Arkansas CE requirements for LPCs, LCSWs, LMFTs, and psychologists, along with renewal logistics, approved providers, and state-specific details worth knowing before your next renewal.

Arkansas Continuing Education Requirements

Arkansas, like Arizona, combines counselors and marriage and family therapists under one board, while social work and psychology are regulated separately (Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, n.d.; Arkansas Social Work Licensing Board, n.d.; Arkansas Board of Examiners in Psychology, n.d.).

License Type	CE Requirements	Renewal / Special Requirements	Official Licensing Board
Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)	24 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 3 hours in ethics. No carry-over of extra hours permitted. Passing the NCE, NCMHCE, or AMFTRB exam during the period may substitute for CE hours.	Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)	30 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 3 hours ethics. Up to 15 hours may be completed via independent home study.	Arkansas Social Work Licensing Board
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT)	24 CE hours every 2 years	Same board and structure as LPC. Clinicians holding both LPC and LMFT complete a combined 24 hours (not 24 each), with a required balance between counseling and MFT content.	Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy
Licensed Psychologist (PhD / PsyD)	20 CE hours per year	Annual renewal cycle (not biennial). Minimum 3 hours ethics. Hours cannot be obtained entirely through home study or online means.	Arkansas Board of Examiners in Psychology

Clinical Note: Arkansas explicitly allows passing a national licensing exam (NCE, NCMHCE, or AMFTRB) during your renewal period as a substitute for CE hours — a fairly unusual provision worth knowing about if you’re pursuing an additional credential during your renewal cycle. Also note Arkansas does not allow any CE hours to carry over to your next cycle, unlike several neighboring states. Arkansas’s rules also explicitly allow up to 1 CE hour for every 8 hours of volunteer counseling services provided under the Arkansas Volunteer Health Care Act — a genuinely community-oriented option that reflects the value of hands-on, applied practice as part of ongoing professional development, not just formal coursework (Brockett & Bauer, 1998).

Arkansas License Renewal Requirements

Renewal fees, cycles, and portals differ meaningfully across Arkansas’s three boards.

LPC License Renewal

Administered by the Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy. The renewal fee is $250 for both LPCs and LMFTs, with an additional $100 late renewal penalty if submitted after the deadline. Supervisor registration for LPC or LMFT candidates carries a separate $100 fee, and license verification requests run $20.

LCSW License Renewal

Administered by the Arkansas Social Work Licensing Board. Licenses renew every two years, with the renewal due by the last day of the month in which the license was originally issued — not a single fixed statewide date. Confirm the current renewal fee directly with the Board, as fee schedules have changed in recent years.

LMFT License Renewal

Administered by the same Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy as LPC, with the same $250 renewal fee and $100 late penalty. Clinicians holding both LPC and LMFT credentials renew both under a single combined 24-hour CE requirement rather than two separate totals.

Psychologist License Renewal

Administered by the Arkansas Board of Examiners in Psychology. Renewal is annual, processed during a two-month window each year (May 1 – June 30), with licenses active from July 1 to June 30. A $100 late fee applies if renewal occurs after June 30. Placing a license on inactive status costs half the current renewal fee, and reactivating requires submitting proof of one year (20 hours) of past CE.

Arkansas Approved CE Providers

Whether you’re looking for Arkansas online continuing education or in-person Arkansas continuing education courses, Arkansas’s boards recognize a mix of national accreditors, state associations, and their own course-approval standards:

Accreditor / Association	Who It’s For	Recognized For
NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Providers (ACEPs)	LPCs	Widely accepted for LPC renewal
ASWB Approved Continuing Education (ACE) providers	LCSWs	Commonly accepted for LCSW renewal, though the Board notes it cannot pre-approve every workshop — licensees are expected to use professional judgment on relevance
APA-approved sponsors	Licensed Psychologists	The standard for psychologist CE in Arkansas
Arkansas Counseling Association (ArCA)	LPCs	State-level CE and networking, affiliated with the American Counseling Association
Arkansas Mental Health Counselors Association (ArMHCA)	LPCs	Hosts an annual conference offering up to 17 CEUs, including mandated ethics content for therapists, supervisors, and technology-assisted specialists
Arkansas Psychological Association (ArPA)	Licensed Psychologists	State-level workshops, conferences, and webinars, many approved for CE credit by the Arkansas Psychology Board
NASW Arkansas Chapter	LCSWs	State-level CE and supervisor referral network for social workers
Arkansas Association for Marriage and Family Therapists (ArAMFT)	LMFTs	Named directly in Board rules as the nominating body for the Board’s LMFT seat; state-level CE and networking for marriage and family therapists

Arkansas’s Social Work Licensing Board is explicit that it does not have the capacity to pre-approve every CE activity — it’s the licensee’s responsibility to use professional judgment in determining whether a given course or workshop is applicable and appropriate to their practice. For a broader look at how CE approval works across all license types and states, see our full guide to continuing education for mental health professionals.

Arkansas-Specific Considerations

A few details worth knowing beyond the base CE requirements:

Interstate Compact Status

Arkansas has enacted both PSYPACT (since 2021, via HB 1760) and the Counseling Compact (since 2023), giving Arkansas psychologists and LPCs a path toward practicing across state lines. As of this writing, Arkansas has not yet appeared among the small group of states where the Counseling Compact is fully live and issuing privileges — enacting the compact and having it operational are two different milestones, so Arkansas LPCs should confirm current live status directly with the Counseling Compact before assuming privileges are usable today. PSYPACT, being more established nationally, is more likely to be immediately usable for Arkansas psychologists.

Exam-for-CE Substitution

Arkansas’s rule allowing the NCE, NCMHCE, or AMFTRB exam to substitute for CE hours during your renewal period is a genuinely unusual provision — most states treat licensing exams and continuing education as entirely separate obligations. If you’re pursuing an additional credential or specialization exam during a renewal cycle, factor this into your CE planning rather than assuming you need to complete both independently.

Dual LPC/LMFT Licensure

Clinicians holding both LPC and LMFT credentials in Arkansas complete a single combined 24-hour CE requirement rather than 24 hours for each license — but the rules require a documented balance between counseling-specific and MFT-specific content within that combined total, so it’s not simply “any 24 hours” once you hold both credentials.

New Licensee vs. Renewing Licensee

A few distinctions worth knowing depending on where you are in your Arkansas licensure timeline:

• Licensed Associate Counselors (LAC) and Licensed Associate Marriage and Family Therapists (LAMFT) practice under supervision while completing their path to full licensure, and must maintain an approved, current supervision agreement with the Board — failing to do so can affect licensure standing, making a clearly documented clinical supervision agreement especially important in Arkansas specifically.
• Supervisors registering to provide supervision to LAC or LAMFT candidates pay a separate $100 registration fee and share responsibility with their supervisee for maintaining the approved supervision agreement throughout the relationship.
• Renewing licensees should note that Arkansas’s no-carryover rule means any CE completed beyond your required total in one cycle doesn’t help you in the next — there’s no benefit to front-loading CE significantly beyond the minimum.

CE Tracker Templates for Mental Health Professionals

Even with a clear picture of your state’s requirements, actually staying on top of continuing education across a full renewal cycle is a different challenge — tracking which hours you’ve completed, which mandated categories still need attention, where you’ve saved your certificates, and when your actual deadline hits. A CE tracker template solves this by giving you one place to log activities as you complete them, monitor progress against your specific requirements, and pull everything together when it’s time to submit your renewal — rather than reconstructing two years of CE history in a panic the week before your license expires.

Get started with the free CE Tracker Template to organize your current renewal cycle, or manage your complete CE renewal process from planning through submission with this comprehensive CE Tracker Template (pictured above).

Final Thoughts on Arkansas CE Requirements

Arkansas’s rules stand out less for complexity and more for a few genuinely distinctive provisions: the exam-for-CE substitution, the strict no-carryover policy, and the combined (rather than doubled) CE requirement for dual LPC/LMFT licensees. None of these are difficult once you know they exist, but they’re each easy to get wrong if you’re assuming Arkansas mirrors a neighboring state’s rules.

Given that Arkansas has enacted but may not yet have fully operational compact privileges for LPCs, this is worth revisiting periodically rather than checking once and assuming the answer stays the same — compact implementation has moved quickly nationally over the past two years. Clinicians who treat their continuing education and licensure landscape as an ongoing practice, rather than a once-every-two-years scramble, tend to navigate changes like this with far less disruption (Neimeyer & Taylor, 2010).

References

• Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling and Marriage & Family Therapy. (n.d.). Board information. Resource
• Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling. (n.d.). Rules of the Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling. Resource
• Arkansas Social Work Licensing Board. (n.d.). Board information. Resource
• Arkansas Board of Examiners in Psychology. (n.d.). Renewals. Resource
• Arkansas Board of Examiners in Psychology. (n.d.). Licensees. Resource
• Brockett, M., & Bauer, M. (1998). Continuing professional education: Responsibilities and possibilities. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 18(4), 235–243. Resource
• Neimeyer, G. J., & Taylor, J. M. (2010). Continuing education in psychology. In J. C. Norcross, G. R. VandenBos, & D. K. Freedheim (Eds.), History of psychotherapy: Continuity and change (2nd ed., pp. 663–671). American Psychological Association.