A study of the Australian counselling and psychotherapy workforce
has found counsellors and psychotherapists are ideally placed to fulfill unmet need of Australians in
regional, rural and remote areas who are struggling with mental health.
The study, A snapshot
of the counselling and psychotherapy workforce in Australia in 2020:
Underutilised and poorly remunerated, yet highly qualified and desperately
needed is published in the Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal of
Australia.
Authors Dr Alexandra Bloch-Atefi, Elizabeth Day, Tristan
Snell, and Gina O’Neill surveyed counsellor and psychotherapist
members of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA)
during October/November 2020, in the first year of the Covid pandemic.
The study found that 27% of registered counsellors and
psychotherapists wanted to work more hours, with a third living in regional,
rural and remote areas, in contrast to 17% of psychologists and 15% of
psychiatrists.
The demand for mental health services during Covid and lengthy
waiting lists for psychologists and psychiatrists have been well-documented in
the media, with reports saying there was a ‘tsunami
of demand’ and Victorians
were waiting months for mental health support.
‘While psychologists and psychiatrists typically
have long waiting lists…previous workforce studies indicate that counselling
and psychotherapy professionals are chronically underutilised,’ the workforce
study authors noted.
PACFA CEO Johanna de Wever and one of the study’s
authors, University of Adelaide counselling and psychotherapy lecturer, Dr Alexandra
Bloch-Atefi, will present on
the workforce study findings at the Australian Rural & Remote Mental Health
Symposium on Thursday 4 November, 12.20-12.40pm.
The fact that counsellors and psychotherapists were ineligible
for Medicare rebates under the Better Access initiative – unlike psychologists
and psychiatrists – was one possible reason for the under-employment of some
counsellors and psychotherapists, the study said.
‘Professional discrimination against registered
counsellors and psychotherapists’
‘In a registered
workforce of 3,500 practitioners currently working around 20 hours per week and
signalling a desire to work more hours, this represents around 100,000 hours
per week of potentially subsidised sessions currently unavailable to the public
due to ongoing professional discrimination against registered counsellors and
psychotherapists,’ the authors state.
‘The government’s longstanding erasure and exclusion
of registered counsellors and psychotherapists from policy and funding
decisions presents a roadblock to service provision at a time of enormous and
expanding need for community-based mental health services.’
Of the 960 survey respondents, 46 per cent were
counsellors and 24 per cent were psychotherapists, with 57% working in private
practice. Although close to 60% worked in major cities, 23% worked in regional
cities, 7.6% worked in rural areas and 2% were based in remote areas of
Australia.
Well-qualified and experienced
The respondents were well-qualified and experienced,
with two thirds having postgraduate qualifications and approximately a third
registered with PACFA for over a decade.
Almost half the respondents had undergone therapy
themselves, which the authors noted was an indicator of quality in therapeutic
outcomes.
In contrast to the 2015 workforce survey, in which
the most common client presentation was relationship issues (70%), followed by
life stress/transitions (67%) and grief and loss (62%), the most common client
presentations in 2020 were anxiety (67.5%), depression
(55.3%), and relationship issues (52%).
About a third of respondents also belong to other
regulated or well-recognised professions such as psychology, social work,
nursing, medicine and psychiatry.
The Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of
Australia ‘Find a
therapist’ function is available on the PACFA
website to search for registered counsellors and psychotherapists.
For further information/interviews, please contact:
Stephanie Francis, PACFA Communications Manager
E: [email protected]
M: 0487 494 031