Telehealth-based mental health care is now the norm. Many clinicians have sought to expand their telehealth practices by getting licensed in multiple states. Psychology, counseling, and social work have all pursued interstate compacts to expand telehealth opportunities for professionals in participating states. This has led many marriage and family therapists to wonder: Why isn’t there an interstate compact for MFTs?
Family therapy
The mental health workforce shortage solution is right there
There is a severe mental health workforce shortage in the US. You have heard this time and time again. In a time of unprecedented demand for mental health care – and deaths from lack of it – we simply don’t have enough therapists. And the therapists we do have aren’t representative of the communities they serve.
The solutions proposed for this problem so far are trivial. But there is a readily available solution to the mental health workforce shortage. It could immediately grow the field by thousands of qualified practitioners. It would dramatically improve diversity within the field at the same time. Even better, it would cost states virtually nothing to implement, and could be done in a week.
Are licensing exam prep courses a good value?
Several exam prep companies offer products and services to help counselors and therapists prepare for their licensing exams. These offerings may cost hundreds of dollars. Are they worth your money?
I’ve previously posted a few tips for preparing for MFT licensing exams, including a list of providers of study courses and materials. I purposefully sidestepped the question of whether such products are worth the cost, which easily can add up to several hundred dollars. It’s hard to know for sure.
MFTs, Counselors will become Medicare providers in 2024 [updated]
As the US government works feverishly to pass a $1.7 trillion spending bill before current funding runs out, MFTs and Counselors appear poised for a major policy victory. If the bill passes, the services of MFTs and Counselors would become eligible for Medicare reimbursement as of January 1, 2024. [Update: The bill passed, and was signed by President Biden.]
Report: Clinical exams in mental health licensing are structural racism
The California Board of Behavioral Sciences will discuss clinical exams this Friday. My colleague Tony Rousmaniere and I decided to dig into these exams, beyond just the horrifying report ASWB released this summer. (TLDR: Wildly disparate passing rates by race/ethnicity.) While I’m previously on record as not a fan of clinical exams, they’re widely accepted. We figured we would follow where the data leads us. And so here it is: