Who Gets to Have Therapy?

Curt and Katie talk about therapists’ responsibility for mental health access and the (sometimes moral) decision about whether one focuses on income or providing treatment to all. We look at a living wage, the mental health system, entrepreneurship, and capitalism.     

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:

• Is mental health access a universal right?
• Group Practice Owner’s Summit 2019 where Katie got some wild ideas, especially during the talk by Maureen Werrbach and Michael Blumberg: Mental Health Access as a Human Right
• The moral dilemma regarding raising your fees to the point that you are only working with people who can afford it
• The extremes of martyrdom and pure entrepreneurship/capitalism
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a place to assess where we identify human rights
• The distinction of the system providing mental health access and individuals providing this access
• Homelessness, mental illness, and addiction
• Where systems and social services are best able to take care of mental health and other concerns
• Larger mission and vision of how to impact the world
• Taking care of your needs as a therapist/person first before society
• The systemic issue of not providing all therapists a living wage and therapists needing to go into entrepreneurship to survive
• The potential impact of universal mental healthcare on entrepreneurship and the field
• The concern about stagnation and stifled innovation
• The power of passion and motivation in the work
• Finding creative ways to increase access, while not negatively impacting your bottom line
• How to make individual decisions about mental health access versus the therapist’s individual income
• Self-actualization - #topofthepyramid
• How the system impacts which therapists are able to continue practicing
• Draw bridge effect of later career therapists not treating newer therapists how they wished they were treated
• Locus of Control impacting decision-making
• The poor treatment of employees, low wages as contributing factors
• The system impacts on people at all levels
• Basic Needs - #bottomofthepyramid
• Profit First versus clients who do not bring revenue in
• Beyond Basic Needs - #middleofthepyramid
• The salary needs that connects to optimal happiness
• Questions about how to address these concerns and which to address first