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What is this young woman’s story?
As a child I survived years of sexual abuse. In adolescence I battled bullying, clinical depression and suicidal tendencies. I refused to drop out of high school when my guidance counselor told me to because I didn’t want to be “yet another mentally ill person dependent on public welfare programs to survive.” What kept me going was my dream of being a mental health therapist so I could use my experience to help others. In college I defeated my binge-eating disorder. In graduate school, I left my abusive fiancé with nothing but what I could shove in my car because I knew I would die if I stayed with him. I still managed to graduate with my Master’s in Applied Clinical Psychology with a 3.97 GPA.
No one in NY State will hire me because I am unlicensed, but I cannot obtain a license without 3600 hours of documented supervised work experience. Even the VA hospital rejected my offer to provide therapy services for free so I could obtain hours because it is a “liability issue.” All of the things life threw at me couldn’t shatter my resolve to overcome and better myself… but the economy did. Tomorrow I have an appointment to fill out paperwork for food stamps and Medicaid. I am an unemployed unlicensed mental health therapist dependent on public welfare programs to survive.
I am the 99%…
For more photos and stories of the 99 percent, visit the “We Are the 99 Percent” Tumblr.
19 Comments
Where are the trolls who bitch about applicable degrees?
Doesn’t get much better or universal than that.
She’s not alone. The psych profession does this to people at all levels all the time.
hey !
check out FDL’s – Tutorial: FDL Citizen Journalism link ! (right hand side of page)
Incredible, Brava Jane Hamsher and FDL, BRAVA !!!
That’s wonderful. I put together a diary Sunday night but ended up scrapping it after 45 minutes because the pictures were too big. Didn’t know we could edit them within MyFDL. I thought I was going to have to pull them all off and re-size them on the comp, then re-upload them.
Indeed. I’m sure the trolls will find something *totally wrong* with this young woman’s degree and find ways to make *all her fault* that she cannot find a job in her field.
I have a relative who’s had similar issues getting full-time paid work in the mental health field. Also has a Master’s Degree; has done a ton of unpaid and low paid work with *accolades* for how great she is in working with patients. But finding it next to impossible to get the final certifications, like the woman in this story.
People with these degrees are much needed but find increasing stumbling blocks to getting paid work. My relative would like to work with Seniors – a growing population with growing needs. But I’m sure some troll will find fault with my relative for not doing *something* the “correct way.”
“We have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge.”
It is quite clear that it is Wall Street that is preventing her from getting work.
O/T Kevin when you get to St. Louis on the 31st. I will help you with whatever you need, transportation and I will get you a room to stay at. Let me know what night you need a room. I can be down at Keiner plaza by 11am on Monday Oct. 31. You can ask Suzanne for my cell number.
I don’t believe her. The state requires two years of supervised employment before licensing. If nobody could be employed w/o a license then there would be no licensing.
She might be trying to say that no one will hire her because of the economy, but it’s unclear what she means.
Most of the jobs like the ones she is seeking are publicly funded, which is normal because the private sector does not do ‘caring work’ well. All it cares about is the bottom line. She can’t get a job because the public funds have dried up. It is as simple as that. Just like most of the unemployed people in the private sector can’t get jobs because aggregate demand isn’t there.
Learn some economics, troll. It will fuck up your talking points, but you will be able to better understand the real world (unless you prefer living in fantasy Koch-world).
I light a candle for the #99Percent.
In California, it was like this even 20 years ago. To get your supervised hours — and who would want to see a therapist who has has not been supervised, i.e., vetted and trained beyond their academic work? — most people had to do volunteer intern positions. There should be and are plenty of such positions, although in this person’s area, she may have to move somewhere to get such hours. And then you have to work parttime or somehow manage to get by.
It is not true that a person needs 3600 hours of supervised experience after obtaining her Master’s degree. In many clinical Masters programs, you can’t graduate without getting some 750 hrs or so of supervised experience, and as you’ll see below, you can use that towards the hours needed for licensure, at least in NY State. In any case, after you’ve gotten your Master’s degree, in the State of NY, you only need 1500 supervised client hours to be able to apply for a license (less than half that required by a psychologist wannabe). Since she has a Master’s degree, she cannot apply for a psychologist license, but instead would be seeking either a Marriage and Family therapist license.
Here’s what a master’s level therapist needs to get a license in New York. It is not as this woman portrayed it. Bold emphases are added.
Now, a psychologist in NY needs two years of supervised experience, a year being defined as 1750 hours, and one of those years must be “after the date your institution has determined that you completed all doctoral degree requirements, including the dissertation.” In any case, that comes to 3500 hours, not 3600 hours. Also, it is typical that the college or institution has a “field placement office” that helps the student find the appropriate placement. It used to be on the East Coast you could find paid internships or practicums. It may be that the East Coast has caught up with the situation of those of us on the West Coast, where paid internships were few and far between. — In any case, she is not trying to become a licensed psychologist, because you can’t apply for that without a doctoral degree, and the hours qualification for her is not relevant, but I’ve documented here, as it may be the source of some of the confusion.
I truly wish that people would look up these things before speaking about what they don’t know anything about. This woman seems to have been terribly treated, and despite her academic successes, is really struggling. The economic situation is certainly making it very hard for her and others like her. However, for whatever reason, her statement about hours needed to get licensed is incorrect.
Statements like the one posted here only amplifies people’s belief that you can’t trust much of what you read on the Internet.
I wonder if this person went to an accredited school. If not, this may be why she’s having trouble getting someone to hire her for her hours. She doesn’t say where she got her degree.
There is a story in the news today that the CBO claims the incomes of the richest 1% NEARLY QUADRUPLED in the last three decades. (A 275% increase means that for every $100 they made before, they now made $275 more, or $375.)
WA state just purged itself of many thousands of licensed counselors. They suddenly decided everyone had to have a masters or doctorate. This is really bad because many counselors are lower level professionals helping people with problems they have had experience with personally. There’s no real money in it and people used these licenses to help them in other work like getting work working with alcoholics or homeless, problems the people have personal experience with. It’s good because these people are cheap to get help from and there were lots of them. NO longer. No one would even bother to get a masters or a doctorate to get the money that comes with this kind of counseling. These people have all been thrown away and to get these low paying jobs one needs an advanced degree and over 3000 hours of supervised counseling by a professional and a bunch of expensive fees and separate tests that are ongoing and they need to be affiliated with a supervising doctor . In other words, you have to be seriously well off and connected now to obtain these licenses. And these kinds of jobs are not well paid jobs.
Anyway, they announced this change basically out of nowhere and no one knew about it until after the dates had passed for people to apply to continue working as a licensed counselor without the new requirements which was put into the plan for people with years of experience. Except no one knew about it. Supposedly, they emailed people using some weird service. Then they have obscured the tests and dates for these license in horrible websites that put you in circles and never deliver the info. There also seems to be several dummy type websites out there as well confusing the issue further.
It’s really weird. Sure, you want a trained professional when you have serious psychological problems but many people don’t need all that. But they will have to pay for this level of professional for any kind of counseling help what so ever now. This is something that has been done to control the profession so tightly that only a few can get in and high level record keeping is kept on every client so there is no privacy to speak of. Not to mention the money to be made by the gatekeepers.
It has made having any counseling what so ever highly expensive and something working people no longer have access to outside of health care insurance and high hourly fees over $100 an hour in most cases.
young woman:
me:
Knut agrees with me:
Knut continues, inexplicably digging himself a huge hole:
Let’s do it again some time — you’re easy.
I don’t know why people want to keep posting disinformation on this topic here. Things are certainly bad enough in this economy and the mental health profession and the situation for the mentally or emotionally ill as stressed as can be imagined. People are truly trampled into the ground under capitalism.
But Textynn is misinformed at best.
While it is true that the old counselor’s certification was changed in Washington state, they did not simply throw out the old counselors status and only license people who have masters or doctorates.
In fact — again, as a simple search of two minutes would demonstrate — Washington has about eight different kinds of certification/licensure for counselors. Most independent counselors from before, i.e., those without a graduate school education, most likely would seek certification as a “Certified Counselor” or “Certified Adviser.” One only needs a Bachelors degree for the former, and an Associate Degree for the latter (2 years of schooling after high school). The supervision requirements are minimal – from one to two hours per month.
If anything, the presence of lower-qualified and educated mental health professionals (and therefore lower-paid) are preferred by most public health agencies. In fact, it is higher-educated and more expensive professionals, like psychologists, who have been bumped out of many jobs over the past decades, to the preference of lower-paid and credentialed people. This makes sense from a market standpoint, but is not necessarily rational from a care standpoint. — I’ll note that some lesser-trained or educated counselors are the equal or even superior to those with a higher degree. As in all cases with health care providers, one needs to vet your own counselor, therapist, or doctor individually, based on your own needs.
In any case, this is another instance of an ill or misinformed comment. I only happen to know these things because I’m in the mental health field.
Please know what you’re talking about when you post things, or at least post links, so the average reader can trust the veracity about what you are saying.
Wall Street are the folks who are insisting on austerity and refusing to pay their share. So yes, in a word, Wall Street is responsible for her unemployment.
As Knut points out above, many pschology positions(such as one funded by the Veterans Administration)would be funded by taxpayer revenue.
Actually you appear to be an idiot in the coversation. I certainly wouldn’t be looking to repeat the exchange if I were you unless your objective is to come off as a callous idiot.