Even with their morale officer, if any ship needs a counselor, it’s Voyager, because of all the stress they were under from being away from home with little chance of ever returning. Being short-staffed, Tom Paris was chosen as medical assistant because of his limited academic background in biochemistry. Could they have done something like that with another crewmember or, being related to personal information, could they not assume that position? If they could, who would have taken that position: Harry Kim, Kes, Seska, etc.?
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Oh, there’s an idea … an untrustworthy counselor.
Y’know, Lon Suder was a Betazoid … that would have been one hell of a twist, for the counselor to be the serial killer … except it would have been a Hannibal ripoff now that i think about it.
EDIT: actually, since the first officer is kinda the HR department, it would be logical for the XO to serve that function … and Chakotay did give Janeway the spirit quest stuff to do.
Voyager was only on her maiden voyage when she was lost. Starfleet hasn’t learned from the infamous Nexus Tuesday incident and fully equipped their ships before leaving their mother system. To emphasize, Voyager didn’t even have her Aeroshuttle but just an empty/dummy plate to cover the hole it was supposed to occupy. And we didn’t even hear about the secondary warp core she was supposed to have
I think a medical assistant is fine because they have the EMH with all of his knowledge to do the bulk of the work.
They don’t have a counselor at all. An untrained one trying to do the job might do more damage to mental health by accident.
Copying my answer from all the other subs you posted the same question on
Because it takes special education and training to be a counselor and nobody on the ship had that training. Voyager was going on a two week mission and rushing to get out assuming that Tuvok might be in trouble
I agree. It takes special training to be a therapist, but emergency counselors should have been arranged.