The Impact of Internships on Recruiting and Retaining Mental Health Workers: Views From Students and Their Supervisors

ABSTRACT

In 2015, 81% of counties in Texas were designated as full or partial Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. To address this problem, we worked with a community-based association of mental health practitioners, using the social theory of career selection, to explore factors that influence students to join the mental health field. Our goal was to better understand how to recruit and retain mental health-trained students. We interviewed bachelor and master-level mental health interns in social work, counseling, and psychiatric nursing and field instructors using semistructured, open-ended interviews. Five themes emerged from the interviews: 1) attraction to mental health; 2) professional experience; 3) impact capacity; 4) develop social work skills; and 5) intern preparedness.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the iCAP fund of the School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington.

Notes on contributors

Jamel Slaughter

Jamel Slaughter is an assistant adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. He received his doctorate in Social Work from the University of Texas at Arlington, School of Social Work. His current research interests are child outcomes through the prism of father involvement.

Richard Hoefer

Dr. Richard Hoefer teaches and conducts research in the areas of nonprofit administration, social policy, advocacy and program evaluation.  He edits the Journal of Policy Practice and Research.