Oregon Continuing Education Requirements for Mental Health Professionals

Oregon layers a genuinely specific set of mandated topics onto its base 40-hour requirement — ethics, cultural competency, and suicide risk assessment all show up across counseling, social work, and MFT licenses, but not in identical combinations. LCSWs need cultural competence and ethics; LPCs and LMFTs need those plus a separate suicide risk assessment requirement social work doesn’t share.

One genuinely recent structural change worth knowing about: Oregon’s counseling board shifted LPC and LMFT renewal from an annual to a biennial cycle effective January 1, 2024. If you’re relying on older guidance describing annual counseling renewal in Oregon, that’s now out of date. Oregon has also made repeated attempts to join the Counseling Compact through new legislation, though as of this writing it hasn’t yet been enacted.

This guide explains the current Oregon continuing education requirements for LPCs, LCSWs, LMFTs, and psychologists, including required CE hours, ethics requirements, renewal deadlines, approved providers, and other Oregon-specific rules to help you stay compliant.

Oregon Continuing Education Requirements

Oregon layers several specific mandated topics — ethics, cultural competency, and suicide risk assessment — onto its base CE requirement across counseling, social work, and MFT licenses, with psychology following its own separate structure (Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists, n.d.; Oregon Board of Licensed Social Workers, n.d.; Oregon Board of Psychology, n.d.).

License Type	CE Requirements	Renewal / Special Requirements	Official Licensing Board
Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 6 hours ethics/Oregon law, 4 hours cultural competency, 2 hours suicide risk assessment. Licensees on the Supervisor Registry need an additional 3 hours in supervision-related training. Prorated to 20 hours for licenses issued 12–23 months before the reporting date; waived if issued less than 12 months prior.	Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 6 hours ethics, 6 hours cultural competence. First renewal is exempt from the requirement. Up to 10 hours may carry over to the next reporting period.	Oregon Board of Licensed Social Workers
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Same board and structure as LPC above.	Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists
Licensed Psychologist (PhD / PsyD)	40 CE hours every 2 years	Minimum 2 hours suicide assessment, treatment, and management. Maximum 20 hours may be online/home study.	Oregon Board of Psychology

Clinical Note: Oregon’s social work and counseling boards both require 6 hours of cultural competency, but LCSWs need 6 hours of ethics while LPCs and LMFTs need only 6 as well but paired with a separate 2-hour suicide risk assessment requirement that social work doesn’t share — the topic overlap is real, but the specific combinations differ enough by license that copying one profession’s checklist onto another isn’t safe here.

Oregon License Renewal Requirements

Oregon’s three boards all use individualized, birth-month-aligned deadlines, but their fees differ substantially — confirmed directly from each board’s own current fee schedules.

LPC License Renewal

Administered by the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists. Effective January 1, 2024, LPC and LMFT renewal shifted from an annual to a biennial cycle, with your specific deadline tied to your birth month. The renewal fee is $190. A 30-day grace period follows expiration, after which a delinquency fee applies; if you still haven’t renewed 30 days past that grace period, the license expires and reapplication is required rather than simple reinstatement.

LCSW License Renewal

Administered by the separate Oregon Board of Licensed Social Workers. Renewal is biennial, tied to your individual birth month. Per the Board’s own administrative rule (OAR 877-001-0020), the active renewal fee is $286, with a $200 late fee if renewal is submitted after expiration.

LMFT License Renewal

Administered by the same Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists as LPC, sharing the identical biennial, birth-month-aligned cycle (also transitioned from annual as of January 1, 2024), the same $190 renewal fee, and the same 30-day grace period structure.

Psychologist License Renewal

Administered by the separate Oregon Board of Psychology. Renewal is biennial and tied to your individual birth month. The active renewal fee is notably high at $780 for the two-year period (roughly $390 per year) — semi-active status runs $390, and inactive status runs $105. A 30-day grace period applies, with a $210 delinquency fee for late renewal.

Oregon Approved CE Providers

Whether you’re looking for Oregon online continuing education or in-person Oregon continuing education courses, Oregon recognizes CE from national accreditors alongside genuinely active state associations:

Accreditor / Association	Who It’s For	Recognized For
National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC)	LPCs	Listed directly among the Board’s own useful-websites resources
Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB)	LCSWs	Accepted for LCSW renewal
American Psychological Association (APA)	Licensed Psychologists	Listed directly among the Board of Psychology’s own useful-websites resources
Oregon Counseling Association (ORCA)	LPCs	Oregon’s ACA branch, home to OACES (supervision-specific CE) and COPACT, its legislative advocacy arm
Oregon Association for Marriage and Family Therapy	LMFTs	Listed directly among the Board’s own useful-websites resources as the state association for MFTs
Oregon Psychological Association (OPA)	Licensed Psychologists	State-level advocacy and community for Oregon psychologists
NASW Oregon Chapter	LCSWs	State-level CE and advocacy for Oregon social workers

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.

Oregon-Specific Considerations

A few details worth knowing beyond the base CE requirements:

LPC and LMFT Just Moved From Annual to Biennial Renewal

This is genuinely recent — effective January 1, 2024, Oregon shifted its counseling and MFT renewal cycle from annual to biennial. If your last renewal predates that change, your next one will look structurally different: a longer cycle, a higher hour total per renewal, and a different rhythm than you may be used to from prior years in this state.

Oregon Has Not Yet Enacted the Counseling Compact

Despite repeated legislative attempts, Oregon has not yet joined the Counseling Compact — advocacy groups within the Oregon Counseling Association are actively supporting new House Bill efforts to change that. If you’re an Oregon LPC relying on interstate compact privileges, confirm current legislative status directly with the Counseling Compact and OBLPCT before assuming they’re available.

Psychology’s Renewal Fee Is Substantially Higher Than the Other Three Licenses

At $780 biennially (about $390 per year), Oregon’s psychologist renewal fee is roughly four times LPC or LMFT’s $190, and considerably higher than LCSW’s $286. This is a genuinely large cost difference worth budgeting for specifically if you’re a psychologist relocating to or practicing in Oregon.

New Licensee vs. Renewing Licensee

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

• New LPCs and LMFTs face a prorated 20-hour requirement if licensed 12–23 months before their reporting date, and are exempt entirely from CE if licensed less than 12 months prior.
• First-time LCSW renewals are exempt from the CE requirement entirely — a genuine break before the full 40-hour obligation begins on the second cycle.
• LCSWs may carry over up to 10 unused CE hours into their next reporting period, giving some flexibility if you complete more than the minimum in a given cycle.
• Supervisors — including LPCs and LMFTs on Oregon’s Supervisor Registry, who need an additional 3 hours in supervision-related training — take on real responsibility, and having a clear clinical supervision agreement in place from the outset helps define expectations for both parties.

CE Tracker Templates for Mental Health Professionals

Oregon’s recent shift from annual to biennial LPC/LMFT renewal, combined with individualized birth-month deadlines across all three boards, makes this a good state to track carefully rather than rely on memory or an old renewal rhythm. Confirming exactly which cycle you’re on, and whether your specific mix of ethics, cultural competency, and suicide risk hours is complete, avoids assuming last cycle’s structure still applies.

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.

Final Thoughts on Oregon CE Requirements

Oregon’s shift from annual to biennial LPC/LMFT renewal in 2024 is the single most important update for anyone who last renewed under the old system — the cycle length, hour totals, and rhythm are genuinely different now. Beyond that structural change, the real work is matching the right combination of ethics, cultural competency, and suicide risk hours to your specific license, since Oregon doesn’t apply the same combination uniformly across counseling, social work, and MFT.

If interstate practice matters to you, keep an eye on Oregon’s ongoing legislative efforts to join the Counseling Compact — the state hasn’t gotten there yet, but advocacy groups are actively pushing new bills, so this is a status worth rechecking each legislative session rather than assuming it’s settled.

References

• Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists. (n.d.). Continuing education. Resource
• Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists. (n.d.). Useful websites. Resource
• Oregon Board of Licensed Social Workers. (n.d.). Continuing education. Resource
• Oregon Administrative Rules. (n.d.). OAR 877-001-0020 — Fees. Resource
• Oregon Board of Psychology. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• Oregon Board of Psychology. (n.d.). Useful websites. Resource
• Oregon Counseling Association. (n.d.). Home. Resource
• Oregon Psychological Association. (n.d.). Home. Resource