[Audio] Elevating Awareness of PA Social Workers
Public News Service
March is National Professional Social Work Month, when social workers around the country raise awareness of the important roles they fill. With masters’ degrees and thousands of hours of supervised training, licensed clinical social workers are the number-one providers of mental health services in Pennsylvania. Nationally, there’s a shortage of social workers. And according to Dr. Angelo McClain, CEO of the National Association of Social Workers, their average salaries are much lower than similarly licensed professions. “Social-work salaries lag behind professions like nursing and teaching,” McClain said. “Social workers have the same obligations in terms of student loans, needs to take care of their family, so salaries should really reflect the value that social workers bring.”

Bill Lamb is a member:
With little budget leeway, advocates bring growing needs of older NC residents to NCGA
North Carolina Health News
The 65-plus population in North Carolina will keep growing like daffodils after a wet spring, no matter what the General Assembly chooses to do. That’s the message about ongoing demographic shifts that advocates for older people took to the legislature as work on the biennial budget begins in earnest. By 2037, North Carolinians over 65 will outnumber those 17 and younger, Bill Lamb of Friends of Residents in Long-Term Care told Hudson McCormick, the legislative aide to Rep. Julie von Haefen (D-Apex), in her office.

Okpara Rice is a member:
Iowa Poll: 77 percent support universal mental health screening for kids
Des Moines Register
More than three-quarters of Iowans support a proposal to routinely screen children for mental health issues, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. Seventy-seven percent of Iowa adults favor a universal mental health screening program for children, with a provision allowing parents to opt their kids out of it. Just 15 percent oppose the proposal, and 8 percent are unsure.… Okpara Rice, a mental health professional from Cedar Rapids who was not among those polled, was thrilled to learn that so many Iowans support the screening idea. “That shows we are doing a good job of reducing stigma around mental health for children,” he said. “People are saying, ‘This is OK. I want to get my kids checked.’”

Donald McDonald is a member:
Summit offers look at road to opioid recovery
The Sampson Independent
Donald McDonald, a North Carolina recovery activist, has been clean and sober for 14 years. A strong believer in peer recovery, McDonald now travels across the state helping “smash the obstacles of substance use disorder.” “One day, I found myself sitting in detox with a death wish,” McDonald shared. “Today, I am standing here as a recovery activist. I now have purpose in life and I am happy to be alive.”

Joe Deegan is a member:
Thomas Health awarded $1 million in funding to help addiction recovery
MetroNews
Thomas Health and Saint Francis Hospital are continuing to grow according to Joe Deegan, and now the expansion will be coming along even more rapidly. Deegan, the Business Development Liaison for the Addiction Healing Center at Saint Francis Hospital, was excited to find out that Thomas Health was awarded $1 million by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources(DHHR) to expand substance use disorder (SUD) residential treatment and recovery services in Clay, Fayette, Kanawha, Nicholas, and Roane counties.

Emily Rosen is a member:
What It’s Like to Be Transgender and Face Dysphoria and Body Dysmorphia at the Same Time
Allure Magazine
Body weight can change, and I feared that the dissonance between how I saw myself and how I actually appeared would never go away, even if the body weight did. I recognize this now as body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). “The main component of BDD in a person is the primary feeling they are not who they are, having displeasure, and being unable to accept oneself physically,” says Emily S. Rosen, a licensed clinical social worker in New York City, trained in modern psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychotherapy. “Sometimes people see themselves differently than they are; like you see something in yourself that might not be there, but it feels like it’s there.”