We are One
"We are One" is my motto for my work with AMHCA and FMHCA (Florida Mental Health Counselors for which I am their Board Treasurer).
We are all one no matter what state or region of the country we come from.
We are one as we begin to get out to our grassroots membership to get them psyched up for the inclusion of mental health counselors into primary medical settings.
We are one in our pursuit of Medicare coverage for Clinical Mental Health Counselors.
As one, we need to...
Create one voice to tell all the folks we can that yes CMHC's need to be included in the provider list for Medicare. Our community here on AMHCA Connections is to unite us, not divide us. We need to speak as one when we speak about issues related to the legislative recognition of Clinical Mental Health Counselors within the medical community.
I have been with AMHCA longer than any of you reading the blog.
Nancy Spisso and I, in 1976, created the concept of an association we called AMHCA for a profession that we called mental health counseling. Believe me, I have been there, done it and have all the T-shirts. Over these 39 years what has made our profession strongest is when our membership and leadership bought into the notion of "We are One".
Join Me in the Effort to Speak As One
Join me in the effort to speak as one as we proceed in this journey on AMHCA Connections. Join me in this new journey for our profession in this community to be one voice, one mind and one spirit in search of the one goal. The goal is to make Clinical Mental Health Counselors fully integrated into the primary medicine setting.
I get concerned when I see on forums here on the AMHCA Connections as well as on the ACA Connect when individuals talk down the efforts to legitimize the profession of mental health counseling. I would advise you all if you want to get a good picture of the history of the professionalization of the mental health counseling profession, to have a look at my online monograph at: http://www.coping.us/cmhcprofessionalization.html. You will find that it was individuals who were "dividers" who kept our profession back from becoming as strong as possible early on, because AMHCA challenged the status quo in the counseling field. We wanted to stand as one with all counselors. Unfortunately for us, we were too idealistic to think that all counselors would support our growth as a mental health counseling profession.
We now have a new paradigm we are pushing which is integrated medicine and it is my hope this new shift will not be a divider but rather something to unite us. It is time for counselor training programs to incorporate behavioral medicine training in their curriculum and open the eyes and minds of counseling students to the shift of mental health professionals into medical settings. I am doing that here at Troy University in Tampa and my students are aware of this shift and getting trained to be able to step into the medical environment with confidence.
My hope is that our integrated medicine community will provide first hand advice on how to flourish within the primary integrated medical settings and in so doing become spokespeople for why mental health counselors need to be recognized by Medicare so as to provide needed services to our rural, under-served and impoverished potential patients in our country.
If you have not already done so, download the letters which AMHCA's Director of Public Policy, Jim Finley, has posted here on the AMHCA website and get out there to your state government reps as well as to your state's national congressmen and senators. Only by speaking as one voice in a loud, clear and knowledgeable way will our message be heard. Please join us on this community to share our insights and lesson stemming from our current and past involvement in integrated primary medical settings.
Thanks,
Jim