Mental health madness.

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doctor_lucy

Good mental health treatment is becoming increasingly a thing of the past. Many times, it simply isn’t available to those who aren’t wealthy. Most company-sponsored health insurance plans don’t even cover mental health anymore, unless it’s short term or if your problem directly affects your job. Most of the time, they’ll just fire your ass.

Mental health for the poor is even worse. If it’s even available in your community, it could take weeks or months of waiting after an entire day spent filling out forms before you even get your foot in the door for your “intake session.” Once you do get in the system (if you do), you’re sent to a bored psychiatrist who wants to pump you full of drugs instead of send you for long term psychodynamic therapy. Then you have to check in weekly with some condescending nurse-practitioner who asks you a litany of prefabricated questions (one size fits all!), takes your temperature and weighs you (why?), and asks you about your drug use.

That’s right. Drug use. It seems like psychotherapy programs for the poor try to siphon you off into a “drug treatment program” if you admit to even sipping a glass of wine a few times a year or having a few tokes of weed on occasion. Where I live, the only free “mental health” program is a drug-treatment program in disguise. Having little money, I went there not too long ago to get therapy for my depression and anxiety and had to fill out about 10 pages asking me about my “drug abuse history.” I walked out.

That’s why I’m currently paying out of pocket for a real psychodynamic therapist who focuses on digging into your childhood and stuff (eg, the kind of therapist rich people pay for) even though I’m poor as fuck.

4 thoughts on “Mental health madness.”

  1. You make a very valid point. One of the reasons why I have stayed with the same company is how good their medical benefits are, which include very extensive mental health benefits and programs.

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  2. I live in the UK and there is DBT and CBT available on the NHS but only in some regions. I am blessed that I live in a region where we have DBT available although the waiting list is long. And there is very little psychodynamic therapy on the NHS. There are psychodynamic therapists who work privately if you can pay for it but so many PDs or people with other PTSD issues (I consider PDs to be a type of C PTSD) are not stable enough to hold a job or are living on disability benefits so this narrows counselling options somewhat.

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    • I think the stigma that these disorders are incurable is pervasive and is the reason why many governments and health insurance companies won’t pay for psychodynamic therapy for PDs. They will treat the depression and anxiety, but those are just symptoms of the underlying problem. Still, that’s better than nothing, as is DBT and CBT. It’s no cure though.

      I agree with you about PDs being complications of C-PTSD. Psychodynamic therapy for PTSD and C-PTSD is very much the same as that used for BPD and NPD so even if PTSD is the only thing your therapist diagnoses you with, I think it can still be helpful. Having the label pinned on you isn’t really that important if the treatment works.

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