Reena de Lanerolle, LCPC, CRC, PMH-C

The best career advice I've ever received is you don't know what you don't know. Broadening your experience is important, but also being kind with yourself and looking at problems or challenges from a holistic perspective. If you've made a mistake, knowing how to learn from that is the most important thing. We can't always change the choices that we make, especially when we make them honestly and with integrity, but you don't know what you don't know has served me very well in my career.

Be bold, be brave. There's so much in the mental health field, there's something for everybody. Find what you're passionate about, whether that's community mental health, private practice, the hospital setting. Find the work that is meaningful for you, because this can be very hard work. There's a lot of secondary trauma, there's a lot of burnout with the stories we hear and the clients we support. So find the thing that makes you feel fulfilled, even if it's hard, even if it makes you doubt the world sometimes. If you're able to help somebody and that makes you feel fulfilled, lean into that. And if this is not the field for you, there's no shame in that.

One of the biggest challenges in behavioral health is the shifting landscape for insurance and access to mental health. We see that a lot with our clients, and it's really disappointing that there isn't more access and support. Specifically within maternal mental health, there's still a great deal of stigma around it. A lot of times, moms and women are not getting support until it's dire consequences. The support of the family is challenging because there are a lot of women that are isolated. Moms and birthing individuals tend to be the beating heart of their family, and when mom is not well, the family is usually not well, so centering the village is incredibly important. But the opportunities are that there is more research being done into postpartum health and perinatal health. I think the more that we're able to shine the light on it and be open about these conversations, the more access we will be given and the more access we'll be able to fight for.

Integrity is incredibly important to me. In private practice, it can feel very competitive, but I've found that if I'm going to be a therapist, it's my job to make sure my clients are receiving the best care, even if that's not from me. So integrity shows up with my clients in that I'm not going to gatekeep where they're going to go. I'm going to find the providers that this person needs and make those connections, because that's more important than having a client on my couch. As a clinical director, the gatekeeping role we have is supervising clinicians before they're licensed, and I take that very seriously. The integrity of our clinicians is very important, and helping clinicians understand their own burnout matters because just like with a mom, you can't pour from an empty cup, you can't serve your clients if you're not taking care of yourself. Accountability is also incredibly important, knowing when to say that you've made a mistake and owning it, and finding a way to do better or to help somebody do better. That shows up both clinically and personally for me, and professionally. Diversity and inclusion are really important. I'm the only woman of color on our leadership team at the company, which is a really important role for me, to be visible to other women of color, but also to say that we need more. When we're hiring clinicians, I focus on really being open in our recruiting and making sure that we are looking at LGBTQ individuals, looking at diverse individuals, people from different backgrounds, people with different perspectives on therapy, especially the social justice perspective, because we can be very constrained in private practice sometimes.