Category: Health, Mental Health & Recovery
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How Psychotherapy Became a Center of Social Work, and What That Shift Can Leave Behind
Social work should be able to relieve emotional suffering and help change the conditions producing it. The danger arises when the profession’s educational priorities, career incentives, and available jobs make treatment of individuals more attainable than sustained work on housing, income, services, and community power. This first article in The Social Work Reformer’s three part…
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South Dakota’s Falling Crime Rate Does Not Mean Every Community Is Safer
South Dakota’s statewide crime totals fell in 2025. That is welcome news, but newly released mortality data show why social workers and policymakers must resist declaring victory from a single aggregate measure. American Indian residents continue to experience homicide and suicide at profoundly disproportionate rates. A serious public-safety strategy must hold both facts at once.…
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Pennsylvania’s 41-Point Behavioral Health Plan Will Fail Without Workforce Reform
Pennsylvania released a statewide behavioral-health action plan on August 5, 2026, after nearly three years of work by a 33-member council, a 25-member advisory committee, and more than 100 consulted residents and stakeholders across all 67 counties. The plan contains 41 recommendations and roughly 200 implementation steps organized around integration, access, workforce, accountability, equity, and…
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Fifteen Percent Lost Medicaid for Procedural Reasons in May. Social Work Must Treat Administration as Policy
The Medicaid and CHIP snapshot released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on August 28, 2026 should be required reading for social-work leaders. It shows not only who is covered, but how administrative systems produce coverage loss. In May 2026, 73.5 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP: 66.4 million in Medicaid…
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Rhode Island’s New Chatbot Safeguards Expose Social Work’s AI Governance Gap
August 23, 2026 Rhode Island enacted two laws on June 23 that regulate artificial-intelligence chatbots and their use in mental health care. One requires developers to build protocols for users who express suicidal ideation, self-harm, or threats of harm. The other addresses AI use in mental health treatment and reflects concern that automated systems can…
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Nebraska’s Medicaid Work Rule Turns Social Workers into Eligibility Infrastructure
August 24, 2026 Nebraska is now the first state implementing the new national Medicaid work-requirement framework, and the consequences will become visible during this summer’s renewals. Since May 1, many adults covered through Medicaid expansion have had to demonstrate qualifying work, school, apprenticeship, training, or volunteer activity. Existing members with coverage periods ending on or…
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Eighty Hours to Stay Insured: Medicaid’s 2027 Work Rule Is a Test Social Work Cannot Ignore
August 2026 On January 1, 2027—or sooner in states that choose early implementation—millions of adults will enter a new Medicaid eligibility regime. Under a federal interim final rule issued June 1, 2026, many nonpregnant adults ages 19 through 64 in the Medicaid expansion group must document 80 hours a month of employment, education, a work…
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Social Work Put All Its Eggs in the Therapy Basket. Now What?
We Devalued the BSW For decades, social work has increasingly organized its professional identity around the MSW, clinical licensure and psychotherapy. In doing so, we have allowed something remarkable to happen: the bachelor’s degree bearing the actual name of our profession has become insufficient for social work licensure in jurisdictions such as New York. Think…