At a recent event, a coworker and I told someone that we worked at Spring Lake Ranch.
“That must be tough,” she responded.
“Actually,” I said, looking over at my coworker, “we love it!”
The truth is, both things are true. Working in mental health can be challenging. According to a 2022 report from SAMHSA, more than half of all mental health workers report experiencing burnout. In addition, mental health caregivers are at higher risk for secondary traumatization, compassion fatigue, and other workplace difficulties.
Much of this is due to the nature of the work, which requires us to strike a balance between caring for our patients or clients and caring for ourselves. The field is often underresourced; the increased need for mental health care across the country is butting up against staffing, training, and funding issues. As a counseling intern, I was able to see clients for free or on a sliding scale. Once I was licensed and boarded with insurance, my rates had to be standardized, which put sessions out of reach for most of my uninsured clients.
Mental health care workers are trained to (and often are brought to the field because of a natural instinct to) genuinely care for our clients. We want them to heal, to succeed, to find peace, but we typically only see a part of their wellness journey. It can take a long time for someone with serious mental illness, addiction, or trauma to find the right combination of therapeutic treatments, to find their own balance. There is no one treatment that works for everyone, and it is often a series of trials and errors. All we can hope for is that the work we do together leads them further along their path to wellbeing.
And yet, working at Spring Lake Ranch gives me much more than it takes. While I am not on the clinical team, I am a part of “the milieu.” Every staff member is expected to be an active participant in our therapeutic community alongside the clinical and direct care staff, as well as the residents. And that is a gift.
I benefit every day from seeing the way that Ranchers from across the country—with different diagnoses, strengths, struggles, passions, and belief systems—come together to care for our animals, tend our gardens, steward our land, and make meaningful contributions. We encourage open communication and equal representation in decision making. A point of pride for us is that visitors typically can’t discern who is a resident and who is staff. We share values and goals, and that makes our community strong and our work profound.
That coworker I mentioned? She and I both work in Development and Communications. Our responsibilities revolve around raising money, typically for financial aid and program support. This means that more folks can access the special care we offer. 1 in 3 residents receives financial aid at the Ranch, so we get to see our work make a difference every time we step on the hill.
We also spread the word about the Ranch and let people know that this kind of therapeutic model exists…and works! As someone passionate about mental health care, it is exciting to see a rarely studied or discussed approach produce such positive outcomes. It is also exciting to work for an organization that is not afraid to grow and transform. Over nearly 100 years, the Ranch has adapted to meet the needs of an everchanging world.
We are doing that again, right now. We are in the midst of a Capital Campaign, raising $18MM to update our infrastructure and build a new Transitional Living Program. The new program will allow for longer stays at a lower price point for residents who are ready for more independence, but not quite ready to leave the Ranch. It’s a model specifically designed to address a gap in mental health care, and one that we hope will be replicated across the country.
That’s the thing about the work we do at Spring Lake Ranch. While you can’t truly understand its depth until you come up to the hill for a visit, it doesn’t exist in a bubble. Former residents, their families, staff, everyone in our community…we all take a piece of the Ranch with us when we go.
