In testimony to Congress the week before last, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a point of emphasizing that if you’re a Facebook user, you own your information. This is meant to reassure users, but it is more than a little misleading. “Your information” is what you personally have uploaded to Facebook. You do not own what other people have uploaded about you. That’s what has privacy advocates so concerned. It’s also why even therapists who don’t use Facebook should be worried about the client confidentiality risks that the company poses.
Ben Caldwell
Podcast episode 6: Psychotherapy’s gender gap
It’s fairly common knowledge that the gender balance of a profession and the pay in that profession are correlated. Jobs populated primarily by women pay less, on average, than those populated primarily by men. But it’s rare to get a clear sense of why that’s the case. The therapy world offers a rare exception. It used to be that most therapists were men. Today, the overwhelming majority are women — and pay is meaningfully lower. But we actually know which change came first.
Saving Psychotherapy: An interview with Scott Miller
We’re big fans of Scott Miller and his Top Performance Blog around here. Miller has allowed his career to be guided by emerging research, a trait that is surprisingly rare in the psychotherapy world. It has led him to some very useful conclusions about how we can become more effective. Deliberate practice and using outcome data are two specific things that we all could do that would almost certainly improve our outcomes.
There are many things about his work to admire. But what I appreciate most is his skill at walking the difficult line between being alarmist — it’s kind of a big deal that therapy outcomes haven’t gotten better in 40 years — and being supportive and uplifting for therapists who are doing their own part individually to improve. So it was an honor to meet him at the 2017 Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference, and to have him interview me earlier this year for his blog.
Advocacy for prelicensed therapists: A conversation with LA-CAMFT
In late 2017, I sat down with my friends at LA-CAMFT for a wide-ranging discussion of issues that impact prelicensed therapists. Advocacy is sort of my jam, so we knew that advocacy would be a big part of the discussion. But we also got to talk about interviews, health insurance, employment, exams, and a lot of other issues relevant to early-career therapists.
#PostThePay is working
Back in January, we launched #PostThePay in hopes of making life a little bit easier for prelicensed therapists and those who employ them. As we described then, too much time is wasted by those on both sides when applicants for a therapy or counseling job wouldn’t take the pay scale that the job offers. Furthermore, California law now requires that employers provide the pay scale to any applicant who asks — so why not just put it in a job announcement?