‘We’re exhausted’: Bay Area mental health shortage deepens as need explodes

For Nataly Velasquez, a counselor at a teen crisis center in Concord, just getting through the day can feel like a small miracle.

Across the Bay Area, overwhelmed mental health workers are reaching a breaking point. In addition to serving on the front lines of a national crisis, many are also struggling to manage the costs of living in one of the country’s most unforgiving housing markets. After propping up an already strained system of care during the pandemic, some are leaving the field altogether.

How the region responds to the shortage could be crucial to confronting many of its most dire post-pandemic challenges, as many residents continue grappling with the “I hear lots of anecdotes about people burning out, particularly in what we might call safety net behavioral health,” said Janet Coffman, a health policy researcher with UC San Francisco.

In the Bay Area, the highest-paid mental health positions, typically psychiatrists, can earn salaries above $300,000. But community health workers — who work directly with low-income families on treatment plans and make up a significant portion of the mental health workforce — may earn only around $55,000 to $65,000 a year, according to a new report by the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies, a nonprofit research group.

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