August 12, 2026
Accelerating growth in the mental health care workforce
Policymakers can help expand and diversify the mental health care workforce.
Millions of Americans struggle to access mental health care due to a shortage of trained professionals. More than 1 in 3 people live in areas without enough mental health care workers.
Kaiser Permanente is working to change this.
We’ve developed workforce programs to help expand and broaden the mental health workforce. They also remove barriers that keep many people from entering the field and becoming licensed.
Our work is already making an impact. In 2025, we helped nearly 1,000 aspiring professionals on the path to licensure. But this effort alone can’t solve the national shortage.
Current barriers
Several challenges make it hard to build the mental health workforce.
- Burdensome licensing standards: Getting licensed requires thousands of supervised work hours, which are often unpaid. Licensing standards help ensure providers are qualified, but some states require more than 3,000 hours of supervised work hours, far more than other states. This adds financial strain and keeps people out of the field without a clear benefit to care.
- Limited access to supervision: Rural and underserved areas often don't have enough qualified supervisors. Federal rules that limit which providers can serve as supervisors contribute to this and can delay the path to licensure.
- Community shortages: There’s a strong need for a multilingual workforce that can better understand and serve more people and that can meet the needs of communities facing disproportionate shortages.
How we’re addressing the shortage
We’ve created programs that address these barriers. They support people entering the profession, gaining clinical experience, and becoming licensed.
- Entering the profession: In California, our Mental Health Scholars Academy helps Kaiser Permanente employees and other community members pursue careers in mental health care. The program offers scholarships and mentoring. It also offers support from academic partners and clinical training. These resources help more people enter the field.
- Gaining clinical experience: Our Mental Health Training Collaborative in Northern California and our Behavioral Health Training Institute in Southern California offer training and supervision for people before and after they earn a master’s degree.
- In communities outside of California, our Post-Master’s Associate Program provides paid, supervised training from graduation through licensure. Together, these programs help aspiring mental health professionals gain skills and prepare for licensed practice.
- Becoming licensed: Our Mental Health Career Accelerator helps master’s-level graduates get their license. The program offers financial support, mentoring, training, peer connection, and exam preparation. It’s available in California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, and Washington D.C.
Better public policies could help expand the impact of these efforts.
Policy recommendations to grow the workforce
We recommend the following public policy changes to address the nation’s shortage of mental health care professionals.
- Increase funding for workforce development: Federal and state governments should provide funding for training and supervision programs. This support can help more people enter the field and complete licensure.
- Streamline supervision requirements: States should make supervision requirements more practical and consistent. For example, they should establish reasonable supervisor-to-trainee ratios.
- Increase available supervisors: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should update its rules so licensed clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, and mental health counselors can supervise master’s-level trainees earning required clinical experience in the Medicare program.
- Incentivize training in underserved communities: Policymakers should offer financial incentives that encourage mental health professionals to train and work in communities with the greatest shortages.
- Advance interstate licensure compacts: Support the development and adoption of interstate compacts for mental health professionals.
- Expand access to telehealth: Remove barriers to telehealth in state and federal law, including unnecessary in-person visit requirements. Support the use of virtual care across states to expand coverage and reach patients in rural and underserved areas.
- Integrate mental health into primary care: Support implementation of the Collaborative Care Model.
These changes would help strengthen the mental health workforce and expand access to care.
