mental health care is seriously broken. at least around here

a reply to: Mugly

Pm me

Maybe I can help you.

I have extensive knowledge on thought processing.

Good afternoon Mugly,

Name is Kyo. I am a licensed therapist but always like to say my advice here is merely that...advice.

One of the biggest issues we have in this country is an extreme lack of understanding or care for mental illness. Despite mental illness being extremely prevalent, society treats it is a weakness that can be "cured" by realizing someone has it worse than you. It's awful and disgusting. None of that however makes a difference in your case. The part that DOES make a difference is that because mental illness is so looked down upon, we the professionals suffer. Our suffering is minor though because unfortunately it is the client that really suffers.

If you are in the US, they cannot legally keep you on a ward unless you present an imminent or immediate and real danger to yourself. However, you are most certainly correct that going to the ER will do little except perhaps drop you a few pills like Xanax or Ativan.

I would definitely recommend looking into community mental health but the sad fact is that it's often as bad or worse than private. They continue to pile up on us too. Just this spring they are mentioning more cuts to public aid. What kills me is that people think this is a good idea. What they don't see is that when public aid is cut, people who are in serious need for mental health care get harmed and the people who use HMO/PPO can lose their community provider when a vast amount of funding is gone and the private insurance bills don't hold up the foundation.

A few suggestions I have for you or calstorm

If you are near a university or college that teaches graduate level psychology or counseling, see if there are internship sites around. They are typically much cheaper.

Also look for sliding scale therapy sites. Great care can sometimes be awful cheap.

If you are comfortable doing so, I'd be happy to do a search for you in surrounding areas.

Or if you feel you have further questions on the process I can answer here or in a message

good luck and be well

a reply to: KyoZero


thanks for the post.

i am in pain management as well and i have the coolest doctor around. i would follow her to wherever she goes.
she is amazing about getting me in whenever i feel i need it. i saw her and told her what was up. she gave me effexor and told me i should continue to look for a psych but she will do what she can for the time.

Mod edit

I live in the UK and the only experience I have is with children's mental health.
My daughter had been accessing CAMHS ( children's and adolescent mental health service) which is a NHS specialist service for around 3 years. CAMHS budget as been cut in most hospitals in the UK for the past 5 years. The CAMHS in my area can now only see those with more extreme problems and doesn't have enough money for effective early intervention, so a lot of children are left without support until such a time that their situation spirals out of control. It can no longer offer support long term either and can only offer a fixed amount of sessions after which a child as to be referred on to the next deemed appropriate service.

What that as meant for my family, is that because my daughter had been using the service for a long time she was one of the first to be discharged and then referred to a charity run counselling service that offers free counselling for teenagers. But because of the budget cuts to CAMHS a lot of other children are in the same position and the waiting list for the counselling service as risen from 6 weeks to 6 months. This meant that she was discharged from CAMHS and left without support while waiting for the counselling service to kick in. Within a few weeks without any support she reached a new crisis which as got so bad that CAMHS have now had to take her back.
So all in all, an attempt to save money which was a pointless exercise because she is now back at CAMHS as contributed to the state of her deteriorating mental health at the moment.

So that is my experience of mental health in my part of the world right now.