My new book, Saving Psychotherapy, will be officially released September 22 [Update: Here it is!]. An edited excerpt about licensing exams is available here. Another excerpt focused on student debt appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of AAMFT’s Family Therapy Magazine (it starts on page 26).
I could spend a lot of time convincing you why you should read the book, but I think these two charts will be sufficient.
1. Total US spending on psychotherapy
Total spending on psychotherapy from all sources, public and private, dropped by roughly a third in 10 years. And this was before the economic crisis that led states to slash billions more from their public mental health budgets.
Click image for full size. Data source: Olfsun & Marcus, 2010. Adjusted for inflation (all figures in 2007 dollars).
2. Average salaries of mental health professionals
While education and training costs in mental health continue to climb, the salaries that licensees make aren’t even keeping up with inflation. Psychologists have suffered the worst decline, and for reasons I spell out in the book, it’s worse for Psychologists practicing therapy than even this chart suggests.
Click image for full size. Data source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Adjusted for inflation (all figures in 2014 dollars).
Both of these charts are in the Introduction of the book. The rest of Saving Psychotherapy is all about what you as an individual therapist can do to ensure your own practice survives and improves while also pushing back against these larger problems in the psychotherapy field.
Check it out. Despite the data here, I think you’ll ultimately find it to be optimistic. I hope it will even be inspirational.