Why Can’t I Find A Good Pair Of Socks That Match?

So phone chargers disappear in my house like Taylor Swift tickets, Teddy’s peanut butter runs out faster than Usain Bolt on the last leg of the 1600 relay and affordable bedside nurses are becoming harder to find than an open lane at the grocery store at noon before the NFL kicks off on Sundays. And now, just when I thought access to clinical psychologists might be improving, they are being poached by professional and major college sports teams. As we increase coverage and understanding of mental healthcare we are walking into a potential issue — less experienced and less specialized therapy professionals are on the other end of the video as sports teams make a play for the top talent.  If you’re an elite athlete I suppose that’s great, but if you are reading this as an insurer in need of providers for your network or a mental health company trying to recruit, you are at a competitive disadvantage.  These sports teams offer compensation 3-5x what typical psychologists can get, and incentives tied to performance, like touchdowns. As many as 200 of the 350 division 1 NCAA programs have psychologists on staff, and some I’ve talked to have multiple psychologists “dedicated” to each team. “It’s great to see a major university willing to fund mental performance consulting positions,” Brian Lomax, Ed.D., said after seeing the news that Cal Berkeley was hiring sports psychologists. The University of California’s Cameron Institute was looking for 2 full time certified mental health consultants and it took less than a week to find a candidate.  One of the interesting roles is to meet with each head coach twice a year to establish mental performance goals and to meet with prospective student athletes during campus visits. A doctorate or master’s level degree is required, along with "knowledge of NCAA rules” – sounds a bit like psychologists who need knowledge of Medicaid rules, by comparison. There is a silver lining to all these recruitment issues: a large number of Americorp volunteers are “going back to school” to become psychologists, public schools like the one in Denver are actually becoming training grounds for healthcare, both nursing and psychology, and residency programs for psych are growing in places like underserved Iowa.  In the meantime, the cost to recruit staff and meet demand and find psychologists who match the patient’s condition seems to be getting more difficult. Sort of like trying to find a pair of socks that match in my house.