Mental Health of Speech-Language Pathologists: Let’s Talk About It

Financial Disclosure: Phuong Lien Palafox, M.S., CCC-SLP was an employee of Bilinguistics. Bilinguistics receives royalty payments for online courses.

Non-Financial Disclosure: Phuong Lien Palafox does not have any non-financial relationships to disclose.

As workload increases for speech-language pathologists, current challenges need to be acknowledged. SLPs across the country are impacted by increased caseloads, lack of opportunity to collaborate with educational and clinical staff, increased paperwork and decreased job satisfaction. As a result, the mental health of speech-language pathologists is potentially impacted. Mental health, which includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being, impacts our ability to think, feel, and act as speech-language pathologists. This session provided considerations regarding mental health and pro-active, functional action items to support the mental health of speech-language pathologists on a day-to-day basis.

Participants will:

• Define and identify mental health considerations for speech-language pathologists.
• Describe self-care as an ethical mandate per principles of ethics for speech-language pathologists.
• Identify outcomes for stressors for speech-language pathologists.
• Identify effective and efficacious strategies to support the emotional, psychological, and social well-being of speech-language pathologists.

Time-Ordered Agenda:

03 min: Introduction
10 minutes: State of current affairs for SLPs
10 minutes: Outcomes for stressors
30-35 minutes: Solutions
05 minutes: Conclusion