Submitted by Jill M. Pellicciarini MA, MFT
To Reno City Council,
I am a Marriage and Family Therapist working in Reno. I was recently made aware of CARES Act funding for mental health in our city. The city’s proposal to use the for profit company “Talkspace” to provide increased and no cost access to mental health help is short sighted and potentially harmful to our community.
First, it has extremely mixed, and many poor reviews as to its security and adherence to confidentiality. Data mining of client conversations has occurred with Talkspace.
Many therapists, who value ethics above all, would not work on such a platform without proof of the safety and confidentiality of client data, and the city is thereby excluding many ethical practitioners from participation in the funding by choosing a possibly disreputable corporation over a network of local providers.
Second, by not allowing other means of accessing the funding, and choosing one company, the city is going to harm our local community. There are hundreds of therapists in this community that are willing to work through coronavirus for less money. We already have the skills and infrastructure and we are doing the work.
The Talkspace proposal, without the option of vouchers and alternative sites, will take revenue away from local businesses as they can reside anywhere in the state, and provide these services. I provide half an hour $25 sessions and one-hour $50 sessions on a sliding scale for my clients. I would love to continue to do that and expand with help from the CARES grant.
Most of my local colleagues, in fact all to whom I have spoken, were not aware that the city had the funds for mental health. We could have put something together long ago if we had known.
If we were to come up with a counter proposal, where local therapists would offer discounted sessions online, and texting, would the city be willing to consider keeping it local? And not paying through a third-party?
It seems a voucher system and an online list of practitioners who would like to participate in the grant, could be made before the end of December.
Is it too much to ask, instead of handing over our clients’ data and a percentage of our paychecks to a third party that has no stake in Nevada or Reno?
I think we can be more flexible than that.
Jill M. Pellicciarini MFT-MA is a native Nevadan, and holds two masters degrees from the University of Nevada, Reno. One, MA in Psychology with an emphasis in Behavior Analysis, and an MA in Counseling and Educational Psychology. Jill is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a local theater and music producer / director / performer, and a grandmother, and mom. She is the author of a 2015 book of poetry on healing called “Crucible Womb” and continues to write and perform music with “Wheatstone Bridge, here in Reno.
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