WorkForce Central announcement.
In November of 2022, WorkForce Central convened a group of behavioral health practitioners from across Pierce County to better understand the barriers that exist to entering and progressing in the behavioral health workforce. There is a growing body of knowledge around the inequities and policy changes that are needed to ensure this workforce is truly supported and thriving. However, we also know there is critical nuance that is added to our understanding of these issues when we ask the experts themselves, those with the lived and professional experience of being deeply entrenched in this work every day.
The following is an account of what those local experts in the field had to say about the struggles they themselves or their colleagues have faced in navigating their career pathways.
Sounds like more about “how do we pump up behavioral health professionals numbers and compensation” rather than affect the mental health of our community and it’s members. Perhaps a similar take to teachers’ unions which have less to do with education than political power. If indeed behavioral health professionals provided the level of service valued for its impact upon the community, the community would reward them with the appropriate benefits deserved. That’s how it works in a free economy: supply and demand. Both sides of that equation must be addressed. (BS Behavioral Science, University of Southern Colorado).
Behavioral health industrial complex, intertwined with big pharma industrial complex, intertwined with pretty much every aspect of our lives these days, to the point where nothing makes good sense lately.
We have too many educated idiots and not enough skilled labor to actually build and maintain the things we actually need.
And then this administration wants to pay off the student loans for all these worthless degrees, to keep the education industrial complex alive.
This is what we get when we prop things up that should live or die on their own merits.
I worked in publicly funded community mental health for 20+ years. Part of that time as a divorced dad paying child support for 2 children and paying a mortgage. I never missed a child support payment, never missed a mortgage payment and carried no credit card debt.
Just like teachers, students getting a psych degree understand the pay is not great. (If you didn’t, it is your own fault for not doing your research) You don’t need a degree from the most expensive university, so be smart about where you go to school to minimize your debt. Those who go into a profession knowing the income limitations yet complain about their income make no sense to me.
Either you want to help people and can accept it is not the most lucrative profession or you need to change careers, so you can earn the living you want.
BUT PLEASE… Stop Whining!!
Several years ago the Pierce County Council considered a 0.1% addition to the sales tax to support mental health. As I remember the total expected take was going to be around $95,000,000 annually. At the public hearing the audience was filled with mental health vendors, all jockeying for what they thought was their slice of the pie. Not one of them addressed the need within the County for mental health services because the Council hadn’t done so as part of the proposed tax hike! I and another individual (was it you KM Hills?) were the only two who opposed the tax hike because need hadn’t been established nor was there a plan to prioritize spending. Indeed it appeared that funds were to be scattered, and squandered, among a prolific group of vendors with nothing more to justify themselves other than their hands out. The motion failed……..and a few years later passed when Council membership changed. Where did that money go? What good did it do (other than pad vendor budgets)? How has mental health improved in Pierce County because of it? Why does the mental health industry need more? You might want to read “The Manufacture of Madness” by Thomas Szasz.
I have heard that multiple people with all of the credentials are having to wait 2 years or more for their licenses from the state, It is a big problem. Reported on Kiro radio that vets its facts, so regardless of money. They cannot get their license. It is hung up with the state.