Day 4,356—We Care Less about Mental Health Than We Do About Education—

 

I wrote about something non-running related today, but if you haven’t watched my race video or read my full race report here it is:

Read the Whole Race Report with all the pictures!

https://tinyurl.com/5xk2tyjm

Watch the Video

https://youtu.be/7QPB5anNpQY

I was thinking about this morning, after going back to work yesterday after spring break. I was hoping the week off school would be the reset I needed, but it didn’t take a full day back to be back where I was. I had class last night, so I was speaking with another student about becoming a licensed professional counselor. While I am closer to getting there than before, I have started to question the usefulness of the certification, at least for the short term.

        It is not only expensive and time consuming to become an LPC but after you go through the program, you will start your career by paying someone else to supervise you for 25-50 dollars an hour for a 1000 hours, so after you get the degree and go through the program than you pay an additional 25,000-50,000 dollars for a two year period to become fully certified. At the same time, while doing this, making on average $30,000 annually, so yes, if you’re doing the math, you’re correct. Even though you get paid very little to start, you also have to give more than half of your annual salary to someone else, just to get started.

        This system does work, and you do make money if you work in private practice and work exclusively with middle-class to upper-class clients; however, if you want to work with those who have the most needs, you will make almost no money and will likely spend the majority of your career paying off your student loan debt.

My goal wasn’t to write about this today, but I was just thinking about it because it is messed up. As much as we as a society seem to acknowledge how much of a problem mental health is, we do almost nothing to reinforce this value through our current systems, through the government, and through the workforce. Instead, we focus on blaming individuals for not dealing with their mental health on their own and seem to shrug as a society when people commit harmful acts due to their untreated issues.