Well said, Bobert.

Well said....

I took a 4 1/2 year break, because I saw I was being burned to a cinder. Then, when I had the opportunity to go to graduate school, I resisted the idea of going for my MSW, because I knew what I was setting myself up for. I explored a number of different options. I went to a career counselor. I consulted with friends and family. But it seems this is the work I am meant to do.

At the time I began graduate school, I wasn't sure if I wanted to follow the mental health specialty or hospice. then my sister died and I knew the hospice work would hit too close to home, so I headed for mental health. (I was leaning that direction anyway.) I still intended to protect myself. My 5 year plan was to practice in a public mental health setting until I got my professional license, then start a part time private practice that would gradually turn into a full-time private practice. I'd do a little pro bono work on the side, or work 1o to 15 hours a week in public mental health to feel like I was 'doing my part.' But the need for skilled clinicians in public mental health was too compelling, and my years in public welfare was a real resource to the people I was serving in public mental health.

I've been in public mental health a couple of years longer now than I worked in public welfare. within the past year, public mental health has now been privatized in North Carolina. I find I am teetering on the edge of burn-out again. The public agency certainly had its fair share of flaws, but there I at least had sufficient job protection to speak truth to power. That job protection is no longer there in the private sector, and I am choking on my own phlegm, not sure how much I can risk and still keep my job.

The thing about being a psychotherapist is the possibility of actually empowering some one is always there, on a one-to-one basis. Seeing a person recognize their own power, seeing them learn to use the tools and resources within them, seeing them learn how to acquire additional tools and make some headway, however small, toward leading more satisfying, effective lives, provides a lot of protection against burn out.

With privatization, my clinic is now expected to make a profit. If we don't, the corporation will close us down. Then who will serve the mentally ill population living various degrees of poverty in my community? As a public agency, we were always having to deal with the scarcity of resources, but our presence in the community to provide services was never in question. The tax payers weren't going to provide adequately to meet the mental health needs of this poor, incapacitated population, but they would provide something. There is no longer that very minimal guarantee. Even that guarantee has now been rendered null and void.

For people in the helping professions, I think burn out is largely the result of feeling ineffective. Of so often not having the resources to be able to be effective change agents in the lives of the people we serve. We become like those people, those people living in poverty, who can never garner sufficient resources to get the job done, to get out of a perpetual state of poverty. We lose hope. It is what so many social workers entered the profession to do-offer hope. Once the social worker herself loses hope, s/he is bankrupt, and really offers nothing.

What makes me the most angry is this. the mantra is 'make the best possible use of the limited resources available.' But resources are not that limited. There are lots of resources. In this country, in this state, in this county, in this town, there are plenty of available resources. It is not that the resources are not there. It is that they are not allocated in a justice and equitable manner. (Equitable doesn't mean equal, it means fair.)

This is a a bit of a 'stream of consciousness' post and is probably too personal and also at best pretty egocentric, if not down right narcissistic.

It is what it is.

Janie