Her Story
About Kayla
Kayla Swanson is a Licensed Mental Health Therapist with a Master's degree in mental health counseling from Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa, earned in 2024. She has worked in the mental health field for about 8 years since 2016, primarily supporting youth in school environments before transitioning to geriatric care through her role at Psychiatric Health Associates. In addition to her clinical work, she completed an internship running the administrative component for the clinical department at Children's Home Society in Daytona, Florida, while working full time. Kayla has navigated challenges such as insurance limitations affecting lower-income families in government-funded programs like Medicaid. She values the advice that her efforts matter even when impacts are not immediately visible and encourages others entering the field to find their niche and maintain passion amid demanding work.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kayla
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I've been given is that what I am doing does matter, even if I can't see the impacts right away. That instant gratification that I changed someone's life, or I made an impact. It's something that you have to wait and see the impact later, you know, even if it's a year or two later. What I am doing is very helpful.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think that everyone should find their niche. I mean, when it comes to working in the health field, there are so many, you know, departments or specialities that you can go into, and I think finding that will be really important, because you need to have that passion to back it, because it isn't easy, and it does take you know, really hard work and your time, and there's gonna be days where you think, oh my goodness, how am I gonna do this tomorrow? And you need to have that passion behind you to keep moving forward.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Something that always comes back as a frustration in my line of work can be insurance. I spent a lot of time in government-funded positions, which are gonna be the Medicaid, Medicare. Recently with the shifts in government, they ended up doing the DOES program where they cut back on a lot of funds, and they really got into looking at everything and where all their funds were going did impact our lower-income families. Where they lost coverages, or had to go jump through hoops to get their coverages back.
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