Professional News
VSCSW doing our part to assist with achieving true mental health parity as a member in the Behavioral Health Providers Coalition!
The Behavioral Health Providers Coalition was established in 2022 to unite all members of the behavioral health profession—regardless of discipline or orientation—in a shared mission to rise above turf battles and amplify our collective voice on behalf of both clients and providers.
Since its founding, the Coalition has prioritized advocacy for mental health parity, a federal and state law requiring insurers to cover mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) services on par with medical and surgical (M/S) services. We represent the eleven largest MH professional organizations across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Despite the law, there is substantial evidence—both statewide and nationally—that many insurance carriers remain noncompliant. This noncompliance has harmed clients through inappropriate denials of care, imposed excessive administrative burdens on providers, and contributed to disproportionately lower reimbursement rates for behavioral health professionals compared to their medical counterparts. As a result, increasing numbers of behavioral health providers are opting out of insurance networks, further limiting access to care.
The Coalition has made significant strides by educating legislators, mobilizing providers, and shaping policy proposals that aim to enforce the law. But more must be done.
We need your help. Let legislators know that Virginians support strong enforcement of the parity law. Behavioral health care is health care, and we must protect the rights of clients to receive it—and ensure providers are treated fairly for delivering it.
Every parity violation means a person with a mental health or substance use disorder is harmed.
For additional information contact:
Rebecca Kaderli at rebeccakaderli@gmail.com
Behavioral Health Coalition
Ophelia Von Ludwig, LCSW
VSCSW Legislative Vice President
therapistovl@gmail.com
Boost!: Making Mental Health Happen!
The Shrinking World and the Growing Need for Social Workers
Frances Goddard, LCSW, BCD
Diane Harvey, LCSW
The bigger the world gets, the smaller it seems. This dichotomy of a shrinking world that is actually enlarging sounds odd, but this is what we mean by that phrase. As people’s environment expands, often by no choice of their own, the more anxiety producing it can become! What actually gets smaller is a person’s ability to feel comfortable in their quaint world of family, friends, work, and home. That once intimate environment is shrinking away. An article in the March 2020 Harper’s Bazaar quotes psychotherapist Akua L. Boateng as saying, “We are not only empathizing with the stress of a parent’s job loss or a child’s rough school year, but also with the distant experiences of mass shootings, natural disasters, and fires.” Social media and the growing ways that information and news are delivered to people bring those distant experiences right to everyone’s front door!
The growing world is creating cumulative outside stressors fueled by…
If you receive the Social Work Advocates, check out our article “The Millennial Shift” in the December 2019-January 2020 issue
* To read more of our blogs or to leave a message visit socialworkinfo.com