|
By Bart Magee, Ph.D. On December 10, 2025 at the Vita Brevis Club in San Francisco, 200 members of the Access Institute community came together to mark a historic moment in the life of the organization. The evening was organized to recognize my efforts to develop and steward the Institute over the past two decades. My retirement from my role as Executive Director created a moment for us to celebrate our collective achievement and embark together on the next chapter of Access Institute.
Standing in a room filled with people who have shaped Access Institute over the past 23 years, I felt something deeper than gratitude. I felt awe. I wished I could have thanked every person individually, because so many have contributed, often in more than one role, to what Access Institute has become. Friends and family, board members, donors, volunteers, artists, faculty, supervisors, community partners, staff, trainees, alumni: none of these contributions stand alone. Each effort has been multiplied through the collective. That is the power of community, and it is the real secret behind Access Institute’s success. “Community” is a word that gets used so often it can lose its meaning. For me, community is not a vague abstraction. It is a real experience of fellowship, created through shared values, common goals, and collaborative work. It is the experience of thinking together, creating together, and making meaning together. Working at the community level is driven not by one’s individual needs but by the desire to have an impact on the world beyond the self, a generative and social drive. We do find personal satisfaction and growth through those efforts, but the real meaning is experienced in relationship to others and to the social world. Access Institute itself was born in community. Around the year 2000, I was a member of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, a professional organization that offered not just coursework, but mentorship, dialogue, and social connection. As an early career clinician, I was fortunate to be welcomed into such a vibrant and thoughtful organization. It was there, in conversations among colleagues, that we began grappling with the tragic closure of community clinics and training programs across San Francisco. Patients were losing care. Mental health interns were losing in-depth training. Senior clinicians were losing opportunities to teach and give back. Out of those conversations—and the shared sense that something essential was being lost—Access Institute began to take shape. Our founding board and initial volunteers reflected that same network: professional colleagues, trusted friends, people bound by a shared desire to make a difference.
0 Comments
By Bart Magee, Ph.D.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the current moment and hearing about these, and other emotional impacts that people are weathering and wondering what I can offer from a psychological perspective. I’ve had many ideas, but I keep coming back to one: Values. In times of upheaval, maintaining a robust connection to core values is not only personally grounding but socially essential. History shows that in moments of radical change, it is our values—articulated, tested, shared and reimagined—that offer a path forward. They help individuals reclaim a sense of agency and belonging, and they give communities a moral framework through which to assess, challenge, and reconfigure the systems around them.
By Bart Magee, Ph.D
I recently sat down with Audrey to get to a better understanding of the nuances of her work and to reflect on our shared values. In this interview, Audrey reflects on her professional journey, the challenges of working within public systems, and the enduring value of psychoanalytic thought in schools.
By. Bart Magee, Ph.D. While promising increase access, the teletherapy boom has left us with greater disparities
While higher income groups have taken advantage of the technology, increasing their access to therapy, vulnerable populations – low-income families, non-white communities, older adults, the unemployed and individuals with severe mental illness have not. Rather than closing the access gap, teletherapy has widened it.
How did we get it so wrong and what can be done to reverse the trend?
Another culprit is insurance companies who keep reimbursement for treatment low. Despite a federal mental health parity law enacted over 15 years ago, insurance plans still limit coverage for mental health treatment. Those who do manage to begin therapy often cannot afford to keep going. A 2022 survey of 1,000 adults in therapy from Verywell Mind, found that seventy percent of people either limited their sessions or temporarily suspended treatment to due to cost and almost half were worried about continuing to pay.
This is why I’m proud of Access Institute and the work it does every day to remove the cost burden and make care accessible and affordable to all San Franciscans. Demand for our low-fee services continues to grow. Calls to our intake line jumped by 55% this year and remain at a high volume. Callers are reaching out seeking individual therapy, couples' treatment, psychological assessment and psychiatry services. |
