Licensed therapists often make less than baristas, and Frank Glassner, CEO of Veritas Executive Compensation Consultants, suggests we stop pretending this isn’t a crisis.
In Glassner’s latest essay, the writer doesn’t mince words: the mental health care system, he argues, is structurally broken, crushing the very professionals we increasingly rely on to keep society functioning.
His take is as clear-eyed as it is impassioned: therapists are essential workers in a post-pandemic world, yet their pay, working conditions, and societal respect reflect none of that urgency. “They’re the emotional EMTs of modern life,” Glassner writes. “And we’re compensating them like interns.”
Glassner’s expertise in executive pay lends him a unique perspective. For decades, he’s advised boardrooms on incentive design, pay equity, and compensation strategy. He’s seen how organizations reward those at the top - and what it means when they don’t reward those doing the most vital, human work.
“Therapists aren’t just healers,” he says. “They’re stabilizers. Unofficial ERs. Soul accountants. And they deserve more than expired granola bars and pastel gratitude journals.”
The problem isn’t just about underpayment, it’s about systemic neglect. Becoming a licensed therapist requires a graduate degree, thousands of hours of supervised (often unpaid) clinical work, and bureaucratic hoops that would make Kafka blink. Once licensed, they contend with low insurance reimbursements, unpredictable cancellations, crushing emotional labor, and zero benefits if they’re self-employed, which most are.
Glassner believes we’ve built an emotional infrastructure that props up everything from IPO-bound founders to Fortune 500 CEOs - without ever acknowledging the people who sustain it.
“You don’t get a stable executive without a stable therapist,” he says. “It’s not just anecdotal. It’s structural.”
Through the lens of Veritas’ compensation philosophy, Glassner outlines a path forward. He proposes a bold restructuring of how we support, train, and pay mental health professionals. Among his recommendations:
- Pay therapists like essential professionals. Establish baseline compensation standards indexed to cost of living and trauma acuity, and incentivize excellence through bonuses, sabbaticals, and continuing education.
- Reform licensing and training. Replace the current gauntlet of unpaid clinical hours with a paid residency model, just like in medicine. “You wouldn’t make a surgeon train for free,” he writes. “Why is it okay to emotionally lacerate someone for nothing?”
- Fix the insurance system. Simplify billing, end preauthorization nightmares, and mandate parity between mental and physical health. “Therapists shouldn’t need a second degree in coding just to get paid.”
- De-commercialize healing. Glassner calls out the rise of social media “therapists” and celebrity-led trauma brands. “Regulation must catch up with virality,” he writes. “A ring light and a good cry don’t qualify you to guide someone through PTSD.”
- Invest in community-based care. Fund public sector therapy pipelines, particularly for therapists of color and bilingual providers, and offer debt relief for those serving in under-resourced areas.
Glassner’s argument is grounded in compassion—but not sentimentality. As someone who’s negotiated C-suite salaries and advised institutional investors, he understands how to build systems that reward performance. His suggestion is radical only because it forces us to reframe what counts as valuable work.
At its core, Glassner’s message is this: if we want to fix what’s broken in society—from school shootings to corporate burnout to the loneliness epidemic—we need to support the people doing the hardest emotional work. Not with platitudes. With paychecks.
In an era of performative wellness and branded vulnerability, Frank Glassner reminds us of a truth too often ignored: healing isn’t a luxury. It's serious, necessary work. And it deserves to be compensated as such.
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