Advocacy in the Wake of Looming Mental Healthcare Workforce Shortages

The Modern Therapist's Survival Guide with Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy

Advocacy in the Wake of Looming Mental Healthcare Workforce Shortages

Curt and Katie chat about the looming (and current) mental health workforce shortages. We talk about the exodus of mental health providers, legislation and proposed bills that seek to address these shortages, and what modern therapists can do to advocate for the needed changes. We also talk about inadequate or harmful strategies (like cheering, scholarships, and subway sandwiches) that are often implemented by agencies and legislatures. We provide individual and collective calls to action.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

In this episode we talk about:

• Recent data that shows that there will be huge workforce shortages in coming years
• The difficulty for folks in accessing mental health services in all sectors
• The reasons that mental health workers are leaving the profession
• High caseloads, higher acuity
• Systemic burnout, jaded supervisors
• The inadequate “support” of mental health workers with subway sandwiches, cheering heroes
• Legislation that has gone through to support healthcare workers in receiving mental health
• Legislation that funds hiring more workers
• Bills addressing scholarships to increase folks going to school for mental health
• The problem with scholarship bills versus loan forgiveness bills
• Bills working to decrease wait times for those seeking services
• Creating and filling in mental health treatment needs with paraprofessionals, peer counselors
• Navigating funding and worker shortages with new treatment planning
• The challenge in “steeling our hearts” to make choices in how we work and who we work for
• Both individual and systemic action that we can take to address these issues
• A request for the National Guard to come in and staff residential treatment centers
• The importance of taking action now to get involved in legislative advocacy