America Has Reached Peak Therapy. Why Is Our Mental Health Getting Worse?
The U.S. has hit peak therapy. So why isn't national mental health improving?
The price tag on that therapy, for one.
Legitimately, it's one of sickest jokes about this country, that you can spend an hour with a therapist working on improving your mood, walk out of the session, and have it immediately undone when the receptionist tells you what the copay is.
100% agree that it's fucked up, but also you should check on if there's some sort of a community counseling program. I know where I live they do community counseling and it's sliding scale down to $5. I really wish that was more places
Those community counseling programs tend to be absolutely overwhelmed and have very long wait times.
I wonder if it could have anything to do with this apocalyptic hellscape we’re living in courtesy of the ruling class?
No, it's probably personal failings of a few hundred million people. The systems are great
Broadly gestures at everything
I had a call with a government agency recently about benefits. I was asked why I didn't seek therapy.
I told the truth. My benefits did not include therapy. It was not financially viable for me to seek therapy.
Government worker had nothing in their script for that and simply said nothing and moved on to the next question.
It is maddening that we as a society are expected to play dumb about the shortcomings of our government.
It's almost like things are so fucked for most people that therapy isn't going to fix it. Might help you cope a bit....
I submit that's it's impossible for us to have reached peak therapy when there's such a shortage of mental health professionals available.
What's worse is that those of us who are qualified, have the degrees, were working before, and are reentering the field, are stuck behind delayed bureaucratic bullshit. Like all of my stuff has gone through, and it's been 6 months. I can't start working until they take it to a board meeting and then vote on approving all of the applications at once. It's Fucking stupid.
Because of late stage capitalism and climate dread. There is no longer hope for the future.
"Hang in there" is not therapy, to me it's infuriating if anything. I can list several well-grounded in reality reasons which made me lose hope. Random phrases are not changing either these reasons or my ability to adapt to them. At some point "hope" feels like self-delusion. But it's nice to know others are not there yet.
"Peak" implies it is currently at its maximum and will go down from here. That is incorrect. We still need more mental health services for people and for those services to be affordable.
Yeah what an insane false premise. Setting aside the US, which is a shitshow, almost no countries with publicly funded healthcare include mental healthcare under that system.
Maybe because they jumped the gun on declaring things “peak therapy.”
We haven't even begun to peak. So many people are entering the field. So much more awareness and acceptance of mental health is being cultivated. So many more people are going to be getting care. We haven't peaked. We haven't even begun to peak.
Republicans and climate change and income inequality.
This seems like bipartisan greed, tbf.
Because gestures to everything
Because it's all nonsense.
Because, there is no such think as sanity.
