Helping Others as a Gig
People often need help resolving issues in their lives: Issues within a person… intrapersonal, issues with others, and issues in formal situations such as work. An increasingly isolated and atomized society leaves many needing help. The common wisdom is that help needs to be on either a one-to-one basis, in a group setting, or both. One of the first principles of counseling is that the counselor and client need to be sitting across from one another or in a group circle. Physical obstacles, such as furniture, need to be absent.
I know something about counseling, but have a basic level of certification or licensing. I know quite a bit because I read voraciously during the six years it took me to earn a graduate degree. My work involved students in a school setting. I have also worked for counseling agencies, and that kind of counseling required experience beyond the graduate level, but no special license. During my training, students were told that we were only qualified to work with people at a superficial or surface level. That’s interesting because many personal accounts of people who have received help with issues take place with ancillary staff who simply listen to what a person has to say. Serious mental illnesses are another part of this equation, and require more elaborate training and intervention, but sometimes improve to a degree by having a person who will listen.
I recently spoke with a licensed mental health worker who is able to work with mental health issues at a significantly higher level than I am able to do. That person also works with clients outside of a traditional work environment. She sometimes works independently in that particular setting, having left one Internet counseling service. That service has licensed clinicians, but the pay is abysmal compared to the counseling agency’s monthly charge for clients. Clinicians can earn less than $25 per session, although that organization charges clients many, many more times what clinicians earn. That company turns some talented mental-health practitioners into gig workers.
Since clinical sessions are conducted on the Internet, clients and their therapists are separated from each other and actual human contact is completely absent.
The Covid-19 pandemic saw a surge in the need for counseling and counseling was difficult to find for many, so Internet services benefited by increased demand. Many people were isolated to varying degrees and Internet counseling services proliferated and so did their bottom lines. Clinicians, while work was plentiful, did not generally see great increases in income despite the great demand for their services.
Helping Others as a Gig