60k to work with borderlines all day

[appelsoranjes]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Outrageous:


Upcoming Vacancy: Psychologist to provide Dialectical Behavior Therapy at Florida State Hospital Duties and responsibilities of the position include: 1) provision of individual and group therapy and crisis management to patients enrolled in DBT services; 2) consultation with other mental health professionals within DBT as well as ward staff and unit management; and 3) provision of supervision to pre-doctoral psychology interns. Psychologist positions require Florida licensure, a doctoral degree from an

APA-accredited clinical or counseling program and APA-accredited internship is preferred. The salary is approximately $60,000. Benefits include paid leave, health insurance and retirement plans. If desired, very low cost housing may also be available. Interested persons can contact TraceyMorse, PhD, Senior Psychologist at [email protected]. Florida
State Hospital is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer and
encourages applications from women and minorities.

 

[deleted176373]

Ya, good luck with filling that position.

 

[psychmama]

Am I the only one who's not shocked by this salary/position? Granted, it's on the low side for a licensed psychologist, but where is Fla State Hospital? If not in Miami area, isn't the cost of living cheaper there?

And what's wrong with folks with BPD? Some of my best experiences have been working with them (j/k, sort of😉).

 

[DVel]

I'm not shocked by this at all. I've been looking at job postings for almost a year now and the salary is pretty comparable to others I've seen. Granted some psychologists with lots of experience or in certain organizations do get paid more, but that seems to be the exception, not the rule.

It's really a shame, after going through so many years or schooling and having to treat very difficult patients. I get so discouraged when I see yet another posting looking for "counselors" where a bachelors is not even required...

 

[Minnesotan4PsyD]

Am I the only one who's not shocked by this salary/position? Granted, it's on the low side for a licensed psychologist, but where is Fla State Hospital? If not in Miami area, isn't the cost of living cheaper there?

And what's wrong with folks with BPD? Some of my best experiences have been working with them (j/k, sort of😉).

Unless I'm looking at the wrong hospital, Florida State Hospital is located in Chattahoochee, Florida, in northwest Florida. It is a suburb of Tallahassee.

 

[deleted176373]

Am I the only one who's not shocked by this salary/position? Granted, it's on the low side for a licensed psychologist, but where is Fla State Hospital? If not in Miami area, isn't the cost of living cheaper there?

And what's wrong with folks with BPD? Some of my best experiences have been working with them (j/k, sort of😉).

I am not shocked by it, but I wouldn't work for that either.

Not now, not ever.

My wife made more than that with nothing more than a high school education and that was in 1993!!! Seriously, that's insulting. Maybe I am thinking unrealistically here, but salaries for Psychologists are unreasonably low.

You most certainly wouldn't want to be carrying 100k of debt and trying to live on 60k per year. You might as well work at McDonald's, I would be willing to bet by the time a clinical psychologist got licensed including undergrad, that if the same person decided to work for McD's they would be far ahead and in a leadership position, the average McD's operations manager makes $58k per year plus an average bonus of 6k. I will assume that the average Ph.D. student has the smarts to make it into McD's management although that may be an overstatement. That's a SAD comparison!!!

Mark

PS The median salary for a McD's worker with NO degree is $40k per year. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=McDonald%27s_Corporation/Salary/by_Degree That's more than most of our internships will pay.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Many/most of the positions that I see posted list "MA/MS/PsyD/Ph.D" as the requirement, and they don't even bother to differentiate, except when it comes to pay....which is in line with MA/MS level pay.

Yet another nail in the coffin of why I most likely will not take a clinican job once I get licensed and on my feet. Many of those positions req. 40+ hours and don't even offer overtime. Sadly people will still take the jobs, which just perpetuates that kind of hiring practice.

I worked a Biz Dev/Sales job in college and made about that (pro-rated for my part-time hours). I didn't even have a 4 year degree and I made more than I do on internship, then I'll make on post-doc, and most likely more than I'll make my first 1-3 years out if I take a clinical position.

 

[cara susanna]

If that's what they pay a clinician, I wonder what they pay their interns.

 

[psychmama]

Agreed, 60k is not a lot of money for what we do. How much is enough? I imagine we all have a magic number in our head where we'd feel adequately valued and compensated.

Care to share? I'd say that making 60k right out of school would be acceptable, but I'd want to be grossing at least 80k by the time I'd been licensed a couple of years.

BTW, I made more working part time as a lawyer 10 yrs ago than I'll make after probably 10 years of psychology practice. C'est la vie.🙄

 

[Ollie123]

I would without question return to finish up my BS in Comp Sci or go back for an engineering degree before I would accept a job like that. Of course that's true for most purely clinical jobs, but you'd have to offer me >250k to even get me to look at any job whose primary tasks consist of working directly with borderlines.

Although I do think its difficult in this field because often the most "difficult" populations are also those who are least able to afford treatment.

As for what I personally expect, I assume we're talking beyond post-doc since for that I fully expect to make the NIH payline (think its 38k for year 1 - probably will be a bit more by the time I get there). Apparently it does happen where people make less, but it seems strange to me given the abundance of post-doc opportunities.

Once I'm out of post-doc, it becomes kind of a complicated issue. My research is expensive, so if I get a 100k+ startup package with a mediocre salary I'd strongly consider it. I can probably progress up the salary rankings a bit faster if I have what I need to do good work. I'd be willing to take a lower salary if its guaranteed versus a higher-paying soft money job. Though it depends on the difference.

Basically, its a complicated issue - depending on the economy at the time, how successful I am in getting my career going, and my confidence in my ability to regularly obtain extramural funding, there could be pretty wide variation in what I'd consider acceptable.

 

[psychmama]

If that's what they pay a clinician, I wonder what they pay their interns.

probably less than 20k, which sadly is the median pay for interns.🙁

 

[Ollie123]

If you don't mind my asking Jon, what is your title? I'm just curious because that salary seems pretty much in-line with what I'd expect from an assistant professor job in that setting, but substantially higher than I'd expect for a research scientist/project director/<insert other title since every hospital seems to have a different name for it>.

Either way, I assume you are soft-money in that setting? Is it 100% soft or do they cover a portion?

If that's getting too personal or you're worried it might potentially be identifying, feel free to ignore.

 

[psychmama]

I make about 20K more than that now (pure research position). . . for reference, I'm one year out of postdoc, and I still feel very underpaid (hazard of working in an academic medical department). I would feel fairly compensated somewhere in the 110 - 130 K range within the next five years.

I think I'd rather work with borderlines doing DBT than working in a purely research setting, but that's me. I wonder if a job like this allows you enough time to see patients privately? If so, then the 60k with benefits might not be so bad.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I make about 20K more than that now (pure research position). . . for reference, I'm one year out of postdoc, and I still feel very underpaid (hazard of working in an academic medical department). I would feel fairly compensated somewhere in the 110 - 130 K range within the next five years.

$120k is in the range for what I think clinical (therapy and assessment) is worth. I'm not talking about 50 minute therapy....but more of the psych evals, reports, some therapy mixed in.

I'd think academic positions would be around the same for doing research, teaching, etc.

I'm hoping to double that 5 years out, but I'll be running a business so it is more feasible, solo work just doesn't offer the higher end without being the best of the best. I'd settle for being a mediocre clinician who runs an uber-successful practice....which is usually the combination you see. Rarely does the best clinician run the best practice.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

In my experience, the wealthiest "normal" folks tend to be small business owners.

Absolutely. While many don't have the glitz and glory, if you can find a niche, people do very well.

My background would mesh with forensic neuro very well, but I've got to balance lifestyle issues.

Not only stressful (short turn around times), but it also can be brutal when testifying, etc. Great money though.

 

[Ollie123]

Eh. So much variability. If you're wildly successful academically (e.g., bringing in 10 million dollars a year in grants to your department), you can make well over 200, even into the 300s. But, that's a rare soul. I think you have a better shot at it developing a business.

I worked for one of these guys before grad school. His "lab" was basically a multi-story building that housed about 60 paid employees and close to 100 undergrads during the "busy season". He does pretty well for himself🙂

Probably no more than a handful of psychology labs that size across the entire country though, so odds are defintiely slim, especially relative to the work that goes into it. I don't have expensive taste and don't need much money to be happy, but I still hope to get some side-income. Not big on clinical work, but I could see myself running some groups on the side and while I don't claim to have anywhere near the business savvy of some here, my gut instinct is that group-work has good potential from the business side of things - given the appropriate location and marketing of course. I hope to arrange some consulting gigs as well on laboratory/computer equipment, so little things here and there could add up over time. If I get back into programming enough to write some lab software, that might make for a good side business as well. That seems least likely to happen though just because it would require a more substantial time investment.

I always wonder whether salary surveys account for things like this. I know PLENTY of faculty who earn money on the side either from a small practice, consulting, speaking fees, etc. and I always wonder how much of that gets counted as "salary" when those surveys come out.

Edit: Jon - don't blame you on not wanting to take that kind of position. Though I do think it depends on the setting - we have some here who have their own grants and research lines, but aren't technically faculty. If the economy is still in shambles when I get there and I can't find a faculty job I'd consider that kind of job, where I'd basically be operating as faculty at a lower pay grade. The completely dependent-on-others, "Head Research Assistant" kind of job, I agree would seem like a super-depressing end to graduate training.

 

[deleted176373]

$120k is in the range for what I think clinical (therapy and assessment) is worth. I'm not talking about 50 minute therapy....but more of the psych evals, reports, some therapy mixed in.

I'd think academic positions would be around the same for doing research, teaching, etc.

I'm hoping to double that 5 years out, but I'll be running a business so it is more feasible, solo work just doesn't offer the higher end without being the best of the best. I'd settle for being a mediocre clinician who runs an uber-successful practice....which is usually the combination you see. Rarely does the best clinician run the best practice.

I feel fairly compensated now, ok, a bit more than fairly compensated... however I expect my first year out of internship to be making about $110k, which is a decent amount (comparatively it's fantastic, but I think it's fair.)

Mark

 

[DVel]

I feel fairly compensated now, ok, a bit more than fairly compensated... however I expect my first year out of internship to be making about $110k, which is a decent amount (comparatively it's fantastic, but I think it's fair.)

Mark

Just out of curiosity, where will you be working that will pay 110K?

I have two friends who are both making 60K freshly out of post-doc, one in clinical and the other in an academic setting. The only jobs that get you remotely in the 100K range seems to be the prison systems.

 

[psychmama]

Just out of curiosity, where will you be working that will pay 110K?

I have two friends who are both making 60K freshly out of post-doc, one in clinical and the other in an academic setting. The only jobs that get you remotely in the 100K range seems to be the prison systems.

And the military, which is Mark P's gig.🙂

 

[psychmama]

Some thoughts I've had about making money in this field:

1) Group work. I enjoy running groups, and I agree there's potential there to maximize income. On the downside, starting up and managing the administrative side of groups is a pain.

2) Combining a day job in a hospital with a private practice. Although this means working hard, it assures the stability and benefits of a job with the potential to earn more and take more varied clients privately.

3) Consultation to organizations, schools, businesses. Developing some workshops or presentations that meet these needs.

4) Forensic work. Not sure about this, but I hear the money's good, and having my JD already gives me a leg up here.

I just hope I make it through the next few years so I can begin implementing these plans! I'm not getting any younger, y'know!😀

 

[psychmama]

You most certainly wouldn't want to be carrying 100k of debt and trying to live on 60k per year. You might as well work at McDonald's, I would be willing to bet by the time a clinical psychologist got licensed including undergrad, that if the same person decided to work for McD's they would be far ahead and in a leadership position, the average McD's operations manager makes $58k per year plus an average bonus of 6k. I will assume that the average Ph.D. student has the smarts to make it into McD's management although that may be an overstatement. That's a SAD comparison!!!

.

Yes, but then you'd have to walk around smelling like cheeseburgers and fries all day long. Plus, have you seen those polyester uniforms?😛

 

[deleted176373]

Just out of curiosity, where will you be working that will pay 110K?

I have two friends who are both making 60K freshly out of post-doc, one in clinical and the other in an academic setting. The only jobs that get you remotely in the 100K range seems to be the prison systems.

Actually, I just got the letter today, but the Navy is offering a $15k per year bonus for new accessions with a 4 year contract, plus $5k for licensure, and another $6k for those who have ABPP certification.

In my case, I won't be eligible for the 15k or the Loan Repayment Options, however when my commitment is up I will be eligible for a $20k per year retention bonus for a 4 year commitment and the $11k for licensure and ABPP.

There is money to be had... it also counts towards public/government service IIRC. Ten year loan forgiveness.

Mark.

 

[JockNerd]

I make about 20K more than that now (pure research position). . . for reference, I'm one year out of postdoc, and I still feel very underpaid (hazard of working in an academic medical department). I would feel fairly compensated somewhere in the 110 - 130 K range within the next five years.

So, out of curiousity, does this compensation feel like it's on the trajectory for psych-dept positions currently? I ask because it's prettymuch what I'd be happy getting (actually I be very happy as low as 100k at tenure if I wasn't being pestered to teach constantly), but to my knowledge the profs in my dept aren't pulling this in.

I occasionally become uneasy that I might have to take some 40k-ish position to be in academia.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

I occasionally become uneasy that I might have to take some 40k-ish position to be in academia.

I am pretty sure that if I look at liberal arts positions (with a focus on teaching and not research), that I'd get stuck on the low end of compensation. I don't want to teach full-time anyway, but it is a problem that the compensation is so low.