Despite loving being a therapist, my field is extraordinarily broken at the moment. The good news is that we are at the precipice of a paradigm shift in mindset.
The bad news is that systems have yet to catch on, ergo perpetuating trauma inside of what is supposed to be a helping system. The ultimate Catch-22.
Although I live in the wealthiest county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, what has become more common than wealth is total and complete systemic failure. Crisis centers struggle to properly staff their departments, treatment centers lack adequate beds and properly trained personnel, to which hospitals and police have now become the spillover catchall for what the behavioral health system cannot sustain.
There are several components to why this is all caving in. One is we in my OWN FIELD have created a system of lack and poverty. Social workers and therapists, newly graduated, are post-grad tracked into agencies where the pay is *not joking here* equal to what @wholefoods is paying all holiday new hires this season. Whole Foods workers don’t need a $75k degree job to work there. Social workers and therapists to do our jobs do. In addition there is ZERO training in graduate school on how to run a private practice. So dropout and burnout rates are at an all time high. Hence, the staffing crisis.
The other conundrum is the treatment model we practice in behavioral health. Nationwide at this time we still practice the insurance driven DSM-5 slap a diagnosis and send them out the door after a little #cbt and off they go… right into another therapists office because there still nags the question, why do I feel like sh*t then still?
The trauma model IS the answer. A trauma therapist is a compassion centered, whole person trained therapist who knows to ask the question, what happened?
What happened to this person? What happened in their culture, generationally in their family, in their biochemistry, in how they eat, sleep, exercise, etc… all with the goal of NOT ENABLING a person (despite some comments on my other posts) but to help find the gaps, and to create a road to healing.
The trauma model will save all systems as soon as we can end the resistance.