Introduction
The need to vastly expand free mental health service must be addressed for everyone but also for those who have developed PTSD due to Trump and Covid. One way is for states to make it easy for retired psychotherapists like me and physicians to reactivate their licenses to practice. Mine expired 10 years ago when I retired and moved to a different state. I am 77 so I will hopefully be vaccinated soon. I have had experience providing individual and in group therapy for those suffering from PTSD. I, and I am sure others like me, would be glad to volunteer time to programs to help address this need.
The title
This is an interview with Dr. Seth Norrholm. It describes an urgent problem that will need to be addressed and remedied in the months and even years to come.
President-elect Biden has called for investing heavily in training and hiring more mental health professionals, including doubling the number of psychologists, counselors and other mental health professionals in school, increasing mental health programs for veterans, and working to reduce suicide rates in LGBT youth. Ref.
The need to vastly expand free mental health service must be addressed for everyone. These programs were cut to the bone during my own career in Community Mental Health which began in what my former colleagues and I call the glory days after the Community Mental Health Act was passed in 1963 had some years before died with a whimper by 1991 when I moved from Michigan to Massachusetts and went into private practice.
I was hired by the Lansing area community mental health program in 1971 shortly after I received my MSW degree from Michigan State in the second year of the federal grant program for building community mental health centers and hiring staff. (Click to see a 1972 photo of me with the staff of the Mason Mental Health Center.)
Over the years our program grew to quadruple the size of the original staff and we developed innovative programs including the first program for Vietnam vets with PTSD in a non-VA program. This was before the VA had geared up their own outreach program.
In those days we had no time limit for therapy and when appropriate we could use co-therapists and see clients more than once a week. Many clients were in both individual and family, group or couples therapy.
Over the years free or affordable community services had fits and starts but due to massive budget cuts ultimately ended up just about non-existent for all but the very most mentally disturbed.
As the Salon article describes it, the PTSD caused by both Trump and Covid there is a pressing need for helping people in a large group that wouldn’t have existed had it not for a diseased and dangerous president and an actual disease. Our country had already been in a mental health crisis which included substance abuse and homelessness with the needs far outstripping available services. There are really no words to adequately describe how much the crisis has been exacerbated.
Just now as I write this on Morning Joe (click to enlarge photo) there's a discussion about the increase in enrollment in both law and medical school surging being attributed to Trump and Covid. I assume applications for graduate study for degrees in mental health are also increasing for the same reasons. Thanks to Trump the public has learned a great deal about psychology and I’d like to think that some students have decided this would be a good career for them.
Unfortunately, it will take years before graduates can take their place as service providers.
One way to alleviate this long-term gap in service is for states to make it easy for retired psychotherapists like me to reactivate their licenses to practice. Mine expired 10 years ago when I retired and I moved to a different state. I am 77 so I will hopefully be vaccinated soon. I have had experience providing individual and in group therapy for those suffering from PTSD. I, and I am sure others like me, would be glad to volunteer some of my time to a program to address this need.
These senior clinicians can not only provide direct service but they can be mentors to less experienced ones.
I am also sure there are retired physicians who have kept current with medical advances who would be willing to renew their licenses if there was an expedited way to to this.
In March medical school students were allowed to graduate early to help in the fight against Covid.
Update: An hour after the Morning Joe segment this was a featured story on MSNBC:
It showed the National Suicide Hotline number on screen but all this can do is provide immediate phone intervention and then steer youth and others to reach out for help, but what if the help they need isn't readily available on a timely basis? By timely I mean within hours, or at the very least on the next day. When I worked in Community Mental Health we always assured we had the ability to see someone for a same day appointment if it was urgent.
According to an article in The Saturday Evening Post “over 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War II. These members of the military might be male or female, from any level of society, as young as 15 or as old as 72, serving anywhere from Greenland to New Guinea.”
You can liken the American response which is needed to deal with the mental health crisis to the Pearl Harbor attack with our armed forces.
The psychotherapist and physician health provider force needs to be on a wartime footing. In order to do this I think we’d be well advised to activate a Senior Force. I suggest at this time in our history it is far more vital than Trump’s public relations inspired Space Force.
If there was a Senior Force of retired psychotherapists and physicians I’d be ready, willing, and able to sign up.
My most recent stories include two on Trump’s dangerous psychopathology here and here.