Why Aren’t Men Becoming Therapists Anymore?
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- Curt and Katie chat about the lack of male therapists and the decreasing number of male students in the profession. We look at current statistics and reported experiences of men in the field. We also dig into what needs to change to balance gender representation and increase the number of men becoming therapists.
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In this podcast episode we talk about male therapists
Continuing forward within men’s health month, we are looking at the state of the profession for male therapists.
Statistics on men in the mental health profession
Depending on license type, mental health professionals are between 60-90% female
Men and women have fairly equal parity on compensation (especially when looking at similar roles)
Men are less likely to seek out these jobs as the wages stagnate, the requirements become more onerous, and due to a lack of male representation and role models
What needs to change to balance gender representation within the mental health field?
Understanding the difference between societal privilege versus professional privilege
Identifying why the number of men is dramatically decreasing within graduate programs and all stages of licensure
The impact of feminism on the conversations about the impact of white men on the field
The perception of “male bashing” and the need to nurture male voices within the profession
The challenge of identifying when men are being ignored or “soloed out”
The problem of stereotyping, ignoring, or isolating male therapists and students
Men being automatically pushed into leadership due to mentorship by male faculty and bias toward men as leaders
How do we get more men into the mental health profession?
Reaching critical failure in trying to provide services to men (if men no longer enter the profession)
Recruitment strategies for graduate programs
Making the profession sustainable for all individuals
Pushing back against wage stagnation due to feminization of the profession
Looking at retention and commitment for male therapists
The importance of representation across the mental health profession
Our Generous Sponsor for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide:
Thrizer
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm is s LMFT in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making "dad jokes" and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: www.curtwidhalm...
Katie Vernoy is a LMFT, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt's youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: www.katievernoy...
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves - except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
I just started listening, so I don’t know if you’ll get there, but the field is politically and ideologically hostile towards men. I’m a doctoral candidate about to go on internship (PhD clinical psych). Grad school is not welcoming towards men unless they’re largely non-threatening. You will hear faculty actively push for more and more female representation in the field, which is incredible. I have experienced multiple female grad students perceive themselves as oppressed and men as privileged.And you just said “men are societally privileged” which is classic gamma bias.
We are not allowed to challenge the accuracy of "disparities", such as the concept of inherent privilege and the "wage gap", etc. The field is so steeped in progressivism that it is unable to tolerate any critique of its fundamental presuppositions. The language both of you use illustrates this. You are demonstrating why few men can stomach entering the profession but you seem unaware of your bias.
If you’re interested in expanding or continuing this conversation, indicate here and I will reach out via socmed.
This!
I’ll say that I caution against generalization here. Women are still oppressed in many other fields and cultures. Or if oppressed is too charged of a word, call it “face barriers”. That being said, in female dominated fields there is an emerging problem of male isolation and an over correction where the preference of encouraging women to join the field becomes counter productive at achieving gender balance and equal representation. Men deserve access to male therapists who can understand their unique socialization and struggles. I agree with you and this is a problem we must continue to work to fix. Male therapists deserve to be have their barriers to access discussed and treated. Male struggles do not discount female struggles. Both exist and have their differences in how they effect people. It’s highly nuanced. We must make space to hear everyone and address the different access barriers for everyone.
The field, like many others today suffers from a celebration paradox. For instance, in the mainstream media it's now common to hear reports like this: "Women are fast out-earning men in the workforce. You go, girl! But we need to address the wage gap..."
@@thecolorjune Even this attitude sucks. We don't even get to talk about a problem without having other completely irrevelant issues to the topic thrown in our face to keep us in our lane. We don't get to mention any problems without having them minimized or completely invalidated.
Imagine having to get your masters degree to get a 23 dollar an hour job and attempting to find a girlfriend. You’re not economically viable.
I think the idea of "male privilege" has become so automatically assumed that it is rarely examined. Are there ways that men have been privileged? Sure. Are there burdens that men bear that women are privileged to avoid? Yes. Involuntary military service, primary responsibility to be the breadwinner in a family, the expectation to face life-threatening dangers in service to protection of others (particularly women and children) to name just a few. If the training of a therapist must address "male priviledge", then it should be contextualised within a real examination of the ALL of the priviledges and disadvantages of both men and women. Along with the "glass escalator", It should examine the "glass floor", beneath which you find mostly men. That might make the conversation more inviting for men. It would trigger many of the 80% of the women in the room who have internalised the whole feminist skewing of reality, but it would be fair.
The APA guide for the treatment of men and boys which was released in 2019 even states that the measure of privilege isn't distributed evenly and that "on the aggregate" men have more of it than women. They also go on to say that many men are blind to their privilege. It's almost like they don't realise that men not only are disproportionately represented at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, they are also disproportionately represented at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy, so it might actually be that men are blind to something that doesn't exist for them. Particularly when it comes to education, pay in early years of professional life, and support structures for people suffering mental ill-health.
If people aren't supportive of you joining in on their "game" then sometimes it's just easier not to play at all.
Men suck! You get what you deserve
As I listen to her talk about male privilege, with the assumption that men just all have privilege, is exactly why men who need help, should not go to a female therapist. If that is the attitude that we as men are going to meet. We are not going to find the help we need. In my case, I have a doctor's degree and bring home a good paycheck. I am white, and am a hard worker. So am I privileged? Well if you look at the rest of my life you would find that I am not. But I don’t think most therapists can see past their own built in beliefs to help me. They only see male privilege. The fact that I am the only one working in my household, that I am the one who cooks every meal, I do most of the child care from the moment I get home, I do most of the household chores. I also have to carry all of the emotional support for my wife. I pay for my wife and 2 of my kids to go to therapy weekly, and I can tell you now that I don’t think it has helped at all. After years of paying for therapy with little to no change, I feel burned out. To be fair, my wife has BPD, we adopted our kids and my son has fetal alcohol, and my daughter has reactive attachment disorder so my plate is full. It comes down to this as long as we label people as privileged and unprivileged then understanding can not happen.
Katie has no idea that there’s female privilege that can destroy men. Talk about that with a room full of women.
What proportion of male therapists are gay.
Besides the obvious politically sexist agenda at play the other factor is that you literally cannot be of any real help to your clients. You’re not even allowed to interject or disagree with anything the client says even to their detriment. Therapists are literally gagged, just what impact can you have in helping someone that is suffering if all you are legally able to offer is affirmations? It’s lunacy. I wanted to become a clinical psychologist but I thought better of it.
As long as you are talking about general privileges, it is no longer about the individual experience that I hoped psychology should be dealing with.
This podcast shows yet again why men shouldn't touch this field, be it going through the biased educational system becoming a therapist nor as a client or patient. It is toxicly biased against men.
Men tend to be rational. Your field is increasingly not. It's not a good match.
Great analysis and arguments on both sides, however, I believed that their was a missed opportunity to discuss the industry change as a part of larger societal trends, for both men and women. For example, I have a masters degree and work in the mental health field, but I transitioned over from an IT Administrative job that supported over 150 medium sized businesses. I noticed a trend in the division of labor between white collar and blue collar jobs that aligns with studies on the breakdown of gender with regards to university degrees and trades.
16:16 *"White men's touch"?!?*
Go ahead, Curt: list the exact differences between the "White touch", the "Asian touch", and the "Latino touch."
You think melanin content makes the difference? I think we have a word that.
the latino touch? Go ahead John: List the exact differences between the "mexican touch", the "cuban touch", the "El Salvadorian touch."
His comment perfectly illustrates for me the problem with the idea of "punching up", or a least a common interpretation of it.
Since the most recent historical atrocities were committed by white men, there is an essentialist assumption that any white man now shares some aspect of character or moral worth with the colonisers, the genociders, the slavers. This is not an explicitly conscious assumption.
And it allows the conscious justification of treating men, and especially white men, no matter how poor, disabled, mistreated, unemployed, as if they don't deserve kindness or goodwill, or at least much less than women do. The difference in apportioning kindness between men and women is evident even in the treatment of children.
I think it has a lot to do with philosophy and emphasis, when you think about it.
The field of psychotherapy in particular, as opposed to say more academic/research psychology where the gender gap is less out of control, is HEAVILY influenced by Continental Philosophy: where social/cultural criticism and subjectivism are heavily emphasized, over say empiricism and objectivity as you would see in the Analytic School of Philosophy.
If you're motivated to go into a profession where you can say, change certain aspects about society that you don't like (i.e. male and female gender roles), you're more likely to go into fields where continental philosophy has more of an influence than analytic philosophy where empiricism and formal logic is more emphasized in the discipline.
Fields that can provide "objective knowledge" are generally more valuable to corporations and governments, because costs can be projected and budgeted, and risks can be better managed. It's the same reason why health insurance prefers medication to therapy, because it's easier to predict how much medication a client might need based on certain criteria, than it is for psychotherapy.
23:50 You hit the mail on the head. My old therapist basically said the same thing to me. I’m a white male, how bad could things be? 🙃
Statistically you’re better than most, simple math
Screw you white man
@@robertduluth8994lol white males with extreme ocd or similar say hi. Most strong mental disorders are more disabling than any bias in the US