Throwaway account since this is mostly just a rant about how broken our mental healthcare system is (something I've always known, but continue to be faced with daily).
I'm a therapist working in community mental health. Graduated in 2020, peak pandemic, trying to navigate starting out in my career while also during a global crisis trying to support clients via telehealth. I love what I do. I love being a therapist and working with my clients, even through it's stressful and difficult at times. I've experienced so much personal growth and I love the field. The problem is that my job is not sustainable with the current state of mental healthcare. I'm getting paid around 40k a year with a masters degree in a major city, which is pretty average for a therapist who is still unlicensed and working for an agency (takes another 2 years post-graduate degree to get independent licensure to be able to go into private practice). I've got a giant caseload of clients with high need and high acuity. I'm feeling like I'm in way over my head– still new, still learning. I'm so burnt out that on my time off I just want to stare at a wall and cry. The health insurance I get through my job ironically DOESN'T COVER MY OWN PERSONAL THERAPY. Thankfully I have an amazing therapist who sees me on a sliding scale and just wants me to pay it forward one day– which I will when I'm able to. My company just emailed us to tell us that our deduction for healthcare will be going up this year. Am I getting a raise? Nope. Is my rent going up this year? Yep. I'm just so exhausted and stressed about finances. Meanwhile I'm getting emails from my company reminding us to engage in “self-care.”
I just hate that it's sort of expected in my field that new therapists will just “pay their dues” by working in agencies where they are overworked and underpaid until they get burned out. Then when they get full licensure many go into private practice, where they often take private pay clients because insurance companies literally pay us basically peanuts while being a pain in the ass to deal with. All while thousands of people struggle to access the care they need and deserve, because they can't find someone who takes insurance– or can't afford to pay. Some day I hope to have a private practice, where I'm able to take clients who can afford to pay in order to subsidize care for clients who can't, so I can offer some services on a sliding scale/pro bono. I'm not sure how realistic this would be, but that's the current dream.
Not really sure what I'm looking for here in posting this, other than to just express how frustrated I am today. I obviously didn't go into this field to make money. I went into it because I am passionate about mental health. But that doesn't mean I don't deserve to make a living doing the labor I do.