There is no shortage of news to talk about these days. And yet there is a lack of access to mental health professionals. A therapist shortage.
In this podcast episode, we’re joined by Derek Bylsma, LCPC to talk about these topics:
- therapist shortage in our country
- consuming bad news
- Roe v Wade conversations
- awareness around athlete mental health
If you are looking to talk with a licensed therapist, reach out to Derek’s team at Millennium Counseling Center.
You can get this episode and more like it at kazsource.com.
Learn more about Derek Bylsma and Millennium Counseling Center:
Derek’s Websites & LinkedIn: Website | LinkedIn
In case you haven’t noticed, we love podcasts. In fact, yeah, you should have one. We’ll even build it for you. A podcast that is. Simply contact us here – we’ll get your podcast published, fast.
Websites you should totally check out:
- KazSource, Inc
- KazCM, ContentMatterz | content brings people together
- SportsEpreneur | the place where sports, entrepreneurship, and mental health collide
More conversations on mental health
- EP145 | “How Podcasts Saved My Life” with Mark Metry
- EP143 | Bad Grades in School to Sports Business Founder With Dan Soviero
- EP141 | Why Start a Podcast About Diversity | “Real Talk”
Meet you on social media:
- Eric Kasimov: Twitter, LinkedIn
That’s a wrap:
- Thank you for listening to this Entrepreneur Perspectives podcast episode titled, EP146 | Therapist Shortage + Consuming Bad News
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- Music, “Here for the Win” provided by Songwriter Jess
Transcript from the segment on the therapist shortage:
Eric: There’s no shortage of news to talk about. There are a couple of things as you mention expanding your footprint, and I think of like, well that’s essential because I keep hearing these stories of lack of access to mental health professionals. A therapist shortage.
Derek: I know
Eric: A lot of it has to do with laws, healthcare laws and crossing state lines or not being able to cross state lines and you’ve heard stories of even in major cities to where one’s trying to get help and they don’t have access to someone because their mental health professional that they know or the people that they know are completely booked.
Derek: Yeah.
Eric: Even in Charlotte I’ve heard of people dealing with this but it’s all over the place when it comes to a therapist shortage. So why is that or take that down the path that you want to take that down.
Derek: Yeah, I mean, I think that the reality is, is that we have way more people seeking treatment and it started with COVID. People went through the kind of whole COVID shut down and then we had a lot of political divisiveness within the country and people struggle with that.
And then I think that more recently, we’ve got these kinds of brutal acts of violence that are happening, pretty consistently these days. And so I think that people are realizing that they need support and they need help. And so a lot of what we’re seeing is people who haven’t been to therapy before, people who haven’t seen a counselor. In addition to that, I just think that it’s becoming more talked about and more recognized — when I was a kid, there weren’t many people who would acknowledge that they had a therapist but it’s different these days and you know, kind of across the board. There are still some communities that struggle with it, as far as wanting to seek counseling. But I think that for the most part of the mainstream Americans understand that this is something that can be helpful for them and that they can kind of get that extra support. And that’s what we see. We will have somebody come in once and they’ll say I’m just going to try this one time. And they’ll even say I doubt it’s going to help or something like that and then they kind of go through the process and then they see it’s really helpful and then it just becomes a part of the way, kind of one of the resources that they use in their life to get that extra support.
The other part is, I think people who have been a support system are less capable of being support systems right now because they’re going through their own stuff. And so friends and family and people we would have leaned on in the past kind of to talk through those things, I don’t know that they have the capability of being able to support somebody else because they’re personally going through more things on their own. And so it’s very difficult for them to be a support system for somebody else when they’re trying to make sure that they’re okay.
Eric: Yeah, I never even thought of that, your community.
People, the natural connections that you would have that could actually help you out with these things.
What’s being done to make it more available? Obviously, if you have more people going to school for this, more people graduating, but that takes time, right?
That’s not an overnight fix. And there probably isn’t an overnight fix.
This is just a little bit at a time. What do you see is being done? I mean, obviously, you all are growing, but what’s being done at different levels, whether it’s the state level or federal level to make it easier to get access to somebody.
Derek: Yeah, there’s a lot of conversations about people being able, especially with things being much more virtual these days. There are a lot of conversations about reciprocity and being able to work kind of in other states.
Right now, the licensing rules are pretty strict about that, both the therapist and the person have to be in the same state where the therapist is licensed. There just was a group of, ...
