Guest commentary: Pacifica’s promise to supply the community with professional mental health experts
By Dr. Dylan Martinez Francisco
Pacifica Graduate Institute cares about the community.
This is at the heart of its new initiative called Pacifica Promise — a ten-year vision of Dr. Leonie Mattison, the President and CEO of Pacifica, inspired by a listening tour that included engaging with the public to understand the needs of the region and our community.
Prominent in the concerns she heard was the mental health crisis facing Southern California.
In California, nearly 1 in 20 adults experience serious mental illness each year, affecting over 1.24 million people.
Among our youth, 1 in 6 are diagnosed annually with a mental health disorder.
However, our mental health workforce is dwindling.
With almost 45% of psychiatrists and 37% of psychologists nearing retirement, the California Health Care Foundation warns of a shortfall of nearly 20,000 mental health professionals by 2025.
Here in Santa Barbara County, we’ve seen a 35% surge in emergency room visits for mental health issues over the past two years.
The economic cost of the mental health crisis in California is staggering. According to the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, the total hospitalization cost for serious mental illness is $739 million, 41% of which is covered by Medicaid.
On the business side, serious mental illness affects workforce participation and can lead to increased turnover, lower engagement, and additional training costs for businesses as they replace affected employees.
The Pacifica Promise represents Pacifica’s dedication to addressing this critical need by training 1,500 diverse professionals uniquely equipped to serve our community’s mental health needs.
These future mental health practitioners will come from underserved communities and bring a deep understanding of the cultural and societal factors that shape mental health today.
The initiative will include tuition assistance and a variety of support services.
What makes Pacifica Graduate Institute uniquely prepared to address the current mental health crisis is the tradition of depth psychology that is central to its approach to education.
As the name indicates, depth psychology recognizes that the psyche, the soul, is more than the mind — it has a depth beyond our awareness.
To be psychologically well requires coming into a relationship with this larger and deeper reality.
We suffer from inhabiting an identity that is too small for the soul.
Dr. Juliet Rohde-Brown, Chair and Faculty in Pacifica’s Depth Psychology Ph.D. program with specialization in Integrative Therapy and Healing Practices, states, “The Pacifica Promise initiative cultivates what society has been longing for, which is a way to reduce the ever-present divisiveness that separates people from their inner core and others.”
Psychological care in the tradition of depth psychology views mental health in the context of what it means to be a whole person in a relationship with all of life.
So, mental illness cannot be treated in isolation from the kind of world we live in.
It does no good to help individuals alleviate their symptoms so they can better adapt to an ill society that requires us to deform ourselves to function within it and then stigmatizes us when this distortion makes us mentally ill.
Faculty members in the Clinical Psychology M.A./Ph.D. program, Drs. Peter Dunlap, Camille Jarmie Harris, and William James Jones state, “Pacifica Promise brings depth psychology actively into the world. Through the integration of healing and justice values, we minister to the crisis of loneliness at the root of so much human suffering. Working together with the communities we serve, we can cultivate psychological belonging and open opportunities to become, together, the people called for by our time.”
This calling is captured in the mission of Pacifica Graduate Institute: anima mundi colendae gratia — “for the sake of tending the soul of and in the world.”
But we cannot fulfill this calling alone. As Dr. Mattison states, “We are seeking regional partnerships with employers to tend to their workforce needs and the health of our community. This collaborative info session aims to bring relevant and interested partners to the table early on in this important initiative.”
Join us for an information session on how you can play a transformative role in this movement toward a healthier, more compassionate community.
It will be on Sept. 6 from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. via zoom. Learn more at pacifica.edu/office-of-the-president/pacifica-soul-promise/.
• Dr. Dylan Martinez Francisco is a Pacifica faculty member and a co-chair of the M.A./Ph.D. in Depth Psychology Program with a specialization in Jungian Psychology and Archetypal Studies.
