New year, new Medicare efforts for MFTs

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Will this be the year MFTs finally are included in Medicare? There are promising signs.

First, there is already momentum for adding MFTs to the list of accepted providers. MFTs have been on three bills, one in each of the past three Congresses, that successfully passed out of one legislative house. (Twice we’ve made it out of the House of Representatives, once out of the Senate.) So far, no bill to include MFTs in Medicare has survived both houses and made it to the President’s desk. But with a new President, a new Congress, and a new public focus on health care reform, there looks to be a good window of opportunity.

There are two bills (HR1693 in the House, and its companion Senate bill, S671) already introduced in the current Congress that would bring MFTs into Medicare. Both are bipartisan efforts that have very low initial costs and are likely to lead to long-term savings as Medicare patients would be able to more easily receive early treatment for mental health disorders. Both have strong and growing support from key committee members in both houses.

In the larger conversation about health care reform, there is also good reason to be optimistic for the MFT profession. The body of knowledge supporting the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of our work continues to grow at a rapid pace, and with licensure now in 48 states and DC, the case for inclusion is stronger than ever.

I’ll keep you posted as the bills move forward. Stay tuned to aamft.org for updates and calls-to-action, when contacts with specific legislators can help turn their votes.

Marriage and the economy

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Slate engaged in a bit of a bogus trend story earlier this week, usually something the online magazine makes a habit of mocking. Under the title “Unwashed coffee mugs,” the story aims to educate us on the toll that the faltering economy has taken on marriages.

Let’s start with what the article gets right: 82 percent of the recession’s job losses have been suffered by men. As of last year, 25 percent of wives out-earned their husbands, a number that almost certainly has climbed with recent layoffs. And time-use data does indeed show that after men lose their jobs, they don’t suddenly find themselves inspired to do more housework; instead, “they spend more time sleeping, watching TV, and looking for a job.”

Getting to what that means for marriage, of course, is trickier.

To be sure, money is a common source of conflict in marriages. But the actual effects of recession on divorce rates are not that large:

Census Bureau figures show that over the past 2 1/2 decades, recessions have had only minor effects on divorce rates, which have been slowly waning since the early ’80s after 20 years of steadily rising. Those trajectories have been influenced more by the rise of the women’s movement and women’s earning power, lower fertility and changes in divorce laws than by dour Dows. The only recorded spike in divorces in the past 75 years came right after World War II.

Expect to see a lot more speculation about money and marriage over the next few months — it’s a common (and easy) theme to strike in writing about family life. But bear in mind that there are contradictory forces on families in a recession; they may suffer greater stress as a result of financial woes, sure. They also may be more likely to come together as a family to make it through a difficult time. Beware of stories that draw conclusions beyond what their data can support.

MFTs (finally) earn job classification with Veterans Affairs (VA)

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My friends at AAMFT Government Affairs have great news: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has finally approved a new job category for marriage and family therapists (MFTs)! This has been a long time in the making, as the VA had dragged its heels since the law mandating such a job category was enacted in December 2006.

Partial text from the AAMFT letter to members follows.

Despite the uncertain timeframe for necessary next steps within the VA, the AAMFT will continue to advocate on behalf of the MFT profession to see that there is swift and fair resolution to final VA implementation. The AAMFT will be working alongside the VA Human Resources’ office to formalize the establishment of new qualification standards for these emerging VA positions. They have indicated that they will seek counsel with our professional organization moving forward as an MFT subject matter expert for the actual development of these classification standards.

Ever since Public Law 109-461 (the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act) was signed back in December of 2006, the AAMFT has been vigilant in pushing for its resolution and enactment, allowing veterans’ around the country access to the services of MFTs. Over the last few months, AAMFT joined forces with the American Counseling Association (ACA) and the American Mental Health Counselor’s Association (AMHCA). In recent weeks, the California Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (CAMFT) also signed onto the united front of AAMFT, ACA and AMHCA. These latest initiatives have been aimed at getting Congress to vocally express its desire for “the will of law” to be adhered through swift VA implementation of MFT and Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs).

Myths about marriage

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Based on current research, which of the following statements do you think is true?

  • Single people are at greater risk of violence than married people.
  • College-educated women are more likely to get married than women with less education.
  • Married people have more sex than single people, and find their sex lives more emotionally satisfying than single people find theirs to be.

(The answer is at the bottom of this post.) I’m lead author on a study in the Oct-Dec 2008 American Journal of Family Therapy on the subject of myths about marriage. Based on a survey of more than 200 marriage and family therapists (MFTs) in California, we as a profession are not as up-to-date on things as we probably should be: The average MFT correctly identified less than 10 myths out of 21. On some items — including the first two items above — less than one in ten MFTs got the answer right.

We are an older profession demographically. The average age of respondents in the survey was above 50. And, in decades of practice, the research underlying what we do advances far beyond what we were taught in graduate school. It can be difficult to keep up with all of these advances in the midst of a full-time job seeing clients, and this is why most states mandate that we receive continuing education; in California, we’re required to complete 36 hours of CE every two years.

I came away from this study wondering about two things: One, what we can do better to keep therapists informed of research advances? Members of AAMFT get the association’s magazine and its journal, both of which provide up-to-date information on the best research in the field. Unfortunately, only about 10 percent of California MFTs are members. Are there other, better ways to get the word out when science advances? And two, how does this impact therapy? The short answer is it may not. Especially if the therapist is using a well-manualized treatment model, it could be argued that the therapist’s understanding of research is not all that important. Still, I find it hard to believe that what a therapist thinks they know about marriage sneaks into therapy in small ways — the little nudges we give our clients through the questions we ask, the nonverbal signals we give, and the homework we assign. If I believe (incorrectly) that a child is better off in a stepfamily than in a single-parent home, might I subtly nudge a couple considering becoming a stepfamily to tie the knot before they are prepared to do so?

The current study will soon be replicated with multiple professions, to see how MFTs compare with social workers, psychologists, and professional counselors. It will be interesting to see whether one’s professional orientation makes a difference in what we think we know.

The answer, by the way: All three statements are true.