After 25 years as a practicing mental health professional in multiple capacities, I have decided that I no longer wish to operate in that system. Therefore, I am abandoning the therapist identity and the culture that goes with it in order to adopt an alternative professional role that can best be captured as a guide, coach, counselor, or mentor.
Consequently, I will be operating outside of what has become a repressive and intrusive mental health culture and regulatory environment that is getting worse every day. This will allow me to practice with the professional freedom that gives my clients the best chance of success and does not compromise my values. I hope my example shines the way for others to follow.
I am in values conflict in the following areas:
- I am tired of having to put a label on someone in order to be paid to help them.
- I do not like having to compromise my strengths-based and systems philosophies in order to play in the pathology-based medical/mental health system.
- I believe the over-medication of America, and especially America’s children, is a national scandal that I do not wish to support by associating with it in any way.
- I believe the pathology-based assessment and treatment planning documentation requirements that many of us are subjected to in agency settings, are draconian, anti-therapeutic, and immoral.
- I am alarmed by the recent disclosures of massive governmental intrusions on patient privacy and believe I am complicit in harming my clients by subjecting them to those abuses via their relationship with me.
- I believe progress notes that therapists are required to do, harm clients more often than they help them.
- I believe the mental health system will continue to deteriorate as the Affordable Care Law is implemented.
Nothing bad has happened to me that has lead me to this action. This is a voluntary decision that will simply allow me to be more congruent with my values in my professional life. I am tired of going along to get along. Many senior practitioners of mental health services have already taken this step. My hope is that others will follow as more and more professionals abandon a mental health system that is broken and increasingly uncompromising.
