I know nothing about California salaries- can't help you there. However "2 years post-degree" is about when most people get their license and accompanying salary bump (slight as it may be). 2 years post-degree and 2 years post-licensure may be a different story.
In your above-listed goals, what function would having the MPH serve?
----------What kind of hospital work? Medical? Behavioral health? Chemical dependency?
Teach what in community college? Psych? Human services? English?
What do you mean by "special program"============
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Even though your salary worries are off putting to me, I can tell you how to find what you seek.
1. search for jobs (careerbuilder, monster) using the keywords LCSW & PsyD, some jobs list salaries; also try usajobs.gov, your state DHHS, NIH, etc BUT realize that the market is always changing and someone could be offered a starting salary of $52k this year and $45 k next year depending on demand, funding, etc...
2. look up CA Medicaid reimbursement rates; you should also be able to find insurance reimbursement rates
3. your salary depends entirely on what sort of job you end up doing and there's no way anyone here can say whether you'll make more as a social worker or a psychologist... I would NOT use that as a deciding factor in degree choice b/c it's a pretty crappy reason (my opinion) for choosing a career in mental health
You will NOT be independently wealthy with either degree without a lot of work. Mental health (outside of the NE) is still a luxury, not considered a necessity, and not necessarily someone's first choice as to how to spend $100/hr. I know some clinicians (LCSW, PhD, & LPA) in my state who refuse to bill insurance or Medicaid and take only cash payments. I had one professor who swore that i needed to move to NYC, open a private practice, and do psychotherapy for the wealthy and THEN commit to a life of underpaid sacrifice.
Mental health is hard. Graduate school was hard. My MSW program was 65 credit hours spread over 4 semesters. That's over 15 credit hours a semester plus a 30 hr internship each semester. My internship was in a rural area 1.5 hrs away... so I had 15 hour days 3 days a week. The classes were ALL busy work with hundreds of pages of articles/text to read per week. At least 5-6 papers per week (if only a 5-6 page write up of something stupid)... sometimes, we did the same assignment as many as 3 times for 3 different professors. I had to write a 60 page autobiography with genograms and all kinds of time consuming crud. The work was not intellectually challenging but it was an insane, absolutely insane, amount of paperwork. Even for a 2 credit hour diversity class, we had to complete 4, minimum 20 pg papers over the semester plus yet another genogram project.
My cohort went through some extra confusion because of in-fighting and power struggles about theoretical orientation within the program BUT even my friends @ other universities (some top 10 swk programs) expressed the same workload, busy work, etc.
The hardest part is that you see things in mental health that are hard to stomach and take an adjustment period. My internship was especially difficult in the beginning. I was on an inpatient psych unit where I spent 12 hrs a day with people who had recently tried to end their lives or were SPMI. My classmates spent their first months answering phones or photocopying papers.
So, I've procrastinated enough... but I'm just letting you know that I do not expect my PsyD to be any easier/harder than my MSW... just more years of time consuming (hopefully more intellectually stimulating) and I don't expect to make all that much more money with my PsyD. In my state, the medicaid reimbursement rates between LCSW and doctoral level clinicians vary only by 16/hr right now at the high end of services BUT I could bill testing as a psych and that could help some...
By the way, you aren't even saving all that much time... most PsyD's are 3 years of classes plus internship... with your internship hopefully being paid and almost like having a real job... so really 3 years of academics... the MSW is at least 2 years (some programs do 3 years) of academics ....
both have to have the same amount of post degree supervised experience and passing of the professional exam for licensure (i think it's the same amount, depends on state I guess)...
So, really, you aren't looking at a significantly longer academic commitment... but financially, it would add up... oh, and there is even LESS funding for the MSW than there is for a PsyD... i had our 2nd best financial package @ my school and it was still not 100%... even the girl with the BEST financial package, my roommate, still did not have 100%... the difference is that there are a lot of in state msw's that you can get for around 10k a year whereas most of the PsyD's are out of state for me...
Ok, really leaving now, I have the flu and it's been so much easier to type these last few days than force myself to function...
good luck w/your decision
i'll blame the fever for forgetting to talk about the public health stuff... I have a certificate in public health... earned from the number 2 school of public health in the nation... in a perfect world, I would apply and be accepted to the phd public mental health program @ JHU (number 1 in the nation) and share that degree w/my psyd... BUT, sadly, I'm not brilliant nor deserving of that honor at this point in my career...so i'll let it go...
here's my take... there comes a point where you can become too qualified for your credentials... like it or not, the world is full of little cielings.. and the more you work in a field reimbursed by the govt, the more you find the ceilings... my msw means i can only do certain things, even with a license... and regardless of the extra training or credentials... i've maxed out...
that has left me in a position where i'm leaps and bounds (no offense to the other msw's) above most msw practitioners but not in a position to do too much more on the record b/c of my credentials... as a result, i had a lot of things dumped in my lap b/c i could handle them... i ended up w/twice the caseload of others, handling marketing, handling policy revisions, handling PR, handling all psychoeducational stuff, etc, etc, etc... and at first, i loved it.... even at the end, i loved it... BUT, i was doing nothing but working and sleeping and i got tired of being the one with the answers... reading policy changes weekly and being a state rep became a liability... i was doing my supervisor's job and getting none of the financial benefits
🙂
so that's sort of rambling b/c i really do feel particularly bad this afternoon, but i had your problem...ive always wanted to be 5 things when i grew up and i pursued academic classes in all of those areas (i have a certificate in non profit management from an MPA program too)... all it did was make me more aware of the flaws in healthcare and more frustrated by the incompetence of some of my peers and it made me know that i needed my doctorate to affect change in a more sweeping way just b/c of the poltics of the business...
ignorance is bliss... remember that... the more you know, the more you'll see, and my thoughts are that if you see it, you have a responsibility to act...
good lcuk
