[Skunkworks] PHP/MySQL: Is there a better way to count distinct values in a column

I have a table with 10 columns, and about 20,000 rows. I want to get the count of the distinct values in 5 of the columns, so normally, I would probably write 5 queries thus: SELECT column_a, count(column_a) FROM my_table GROUP BY column_a; SELECT column_b, count(column_b) FROM my_table GROUP BY column_b; SELECT column_c, count(column_c) FROM my_table GROUP BY column_c; SELECT column_d, count(column_d) FROM my_table GROUP BY column_d; SELECT column_e, count(column_e) FROM my_table GROUP BY column_e; My question is, is there a way I can do this in a more generic/future proof way? Maybe a stored procedure which I just pass the table name to? Or some PHP function which I just give the name of the table to? Ultimate goal is to write just one query to get the above data.