Psychotherapy Notes

The problem with life coaching

October 20, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

wooden-chest Becoming a therapist isn’t the only way you can put a psychology or counseling degree to work. You can also become a “life coach,” a growing profession that involves helping people come closer to reaching their life goals. Some clients who would resist going to therapy will happily visit with a life coach, as receiving coaching does not carry the same implications that going to therapy might. And some therapists see coaching as a way to diversify their practice, allowing them to market to clients who simply wouldn’t attend counseling or therapy.

Life coaching is a perfectly respectable and well-defined profession. The problem with life coaching isn’t the work itself, for which there clearly is a market. It’s with the people providing it.

Texas Supreme Court to hear appeal on MFT diagnosis

October 13, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

Texas Capitol Earlier this year, the Texas Supreme Court refused to hear a case about marriage and family therapists’ (MFTs’) ability to independently diagnose mental illness. While MFTs are trained in diagnosis, a lower court ruled that the state’s licensing board overstepped its authority in an attempt to add the word “diagnosis” to the MFT scope of practice. Going further, the court ruling determined that MFTs should not have been independently diagnosing in the first place. (Though the word “diagnose” was not previously in the scope language, MFTs diagnosing mental illness was common practice, as it is around the country.) The state Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case meant that the lower ruling stood, and MFTs could not diagnose.

Court procedures in Texas allow for one final appeal of the court’s decision not to hear a case. The AAMFT filed an appeal on June 13. In a rare move, the court granted that appeal. Later this year, the Texas Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether MFTs should be allowed to independently diagnose mental illness.

Ethically, it’s fine to diagnose Donald Trump

September 28, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Bill Doherty gave an interview to Minnesota Public Radio last month, cautioning that therapists should avoid issuing diagnoses of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Doherty is certainly correct that diagnosing from afar is dangerous, for a multitude of reasons. But as it turns out, most mental health ethics codes are fine with it.

Two new interviews

September 14, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

I’m presenting at the Networking Luncheon at this week’s AAMFT Annual Conference in Indianapolis. (Come see!) The topic of the presentation will be the big picture of what’s happening in the field of psychotherapy: Fewer people are coming for services, they’re paying less for them, and our salaries as professionals are dropping relative to inflation. I’ll be talking about what individual practitioners can do to turn the ship. With the steps I outline in the book Saving Psychotherapy (and in next week’s talk), you can improve your own practice while helping the field as a whole. If you’d like a brief taste of what I’ll be talking about next week, I’ve recently done a couple of interviews you might like.

See me at the 2016 AAMFT Annual Conference

September 7, 2016September 7, 2016 by Ben Caldwell

I’ll be presenting multiple times at this year’s AAMFT Annual Conference in Indianapolis. Come see me at any of the following:

Networking Luncheon

Friday, 12:30p-2:00p
Benjamin Caldwell

We have decades of data proving that psychotherapy works. But data also shows that spending on therapy is rapidly declining — fewer people are coming — as training costs and requirements increase. MFTs at all career levels are impacted by these trends, which are already pushing some well-qualified therapists out of the field. Ben Caldwell hosts this fast-paced, data-driven, and ultimately optimistic presentation that will outline the specific steps MFTs can take on an individual basis to improve their own practices, while saving our field from becoming one by and for the wealthy.