Affording therapy doesn't mean access to competent therapy. There are plenty of therapists who got into it because depressed, anxious people are everywhere and it's super easy to charge upper middle class people $150/session to give them the most basic mental health care advice in existence.

And for some people that's all they need, and that's fine. But if you have an eating disorder, or you're LGBT, or you're a minority, or you have PTSD or trauma you need to work through, or basically any "complex" mental health care need, it is HARD if not impossible to find a competent therapist that is in network, near you, and affordable. And there's no way to know if the therapist you're thinking of seeing is competent in those things at all until you go there, open yourself up, and suddenly maybe they say something extremely shitty that sours the whole experience and you have to start over again.

If I hadn't been able to go to my local LGBT center to get therapy, I don't know what would have happened with me. And it still wasn't cheap! You can't just go to therapy a couple of times and be done with it, I was prescribed 16 sessions (which is like, the basic default amount and they will extend it further if you need it), and if your copay is even $10 or $20 that is a lot of money to drop on something you're not positive is even going to help you.

Which like, isn't to say that heroin is a good alternative. It's just that when someone has a $20 in their pocket and they can either spend it on a single therapy session that may or may not be beneficial to them (or can even be retraumatizing) or they can spend it on a bag of heroin that will for sure get them high and make them feel better right now, it's not hard to see why some people are going to choose the latter.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not really sure what you're arguing here.. Heroin (from my googling) is like 15-20 bucks for a tenth of a gram. And also from googling it looks like it can cost users $150-$200 a day.

I go to therapy. I've gone to a bunch of different therapists. I go twice a month and it's $150 a session. You don't need therapists to "be in network" for you to go to them. And $300 a month is way cheaper than $4500 a month, no matter what way you split it.

Which like, isn’t to say that heroin is a good alternative. It’s just that when someone has a $20 in their pocket and they can either spend it on a single therapy session that may or may not be beneficial to them (or can even be retraumatizing) or they can spend it on a bag of heroin that will for sure get them high and make them feel better right now, it’s not hard to see why some people are going to choose the latter.

In regards to this, I'm pretty sure that the second you think of taking heroin you're screwed. It commonly results in addiction after only a single try. My point is that don't ever think of heroin as the solution, because the cost of therapy is not the problem.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 4 months ago

I thought I was pretty clear about what I was saying: “just go to therapy” ignores all the reasons people don’t “just” go to therapy. Nobody is a heroin addict because it’s fun, and lack of access to appropriate mental healthcare is a huge factor in that.

You don't need therapists to "be in network" for you to go to them.

If therapy had cost me $150/session instead of $5/session I wouldn’t have gotten it, and those price points are set by my insurance company according to if they’re in network or not. If $150/session is nothing to you then I’m glad for you, but that price point is a huge factor for the majority of people.

Like, in some places in the US there are people who will do minor surgeries on themselves because it costs too much to see a doctor; the depths of poverty and lack of medical access in some areas (especially rural ones) is way beyond what you imagine if you haven’t seen it. And it’s probably not a coincidence that there is a huge epidemic of opioid addiction in rural areas.

If you’re at the point where you’re saying “oh but heroin costs so much more than therapy”, you are not in the kind of mindset of someone who is at the point of taking heroin to cope. They are not making good long term decisions because their mental health is in the gutter.

Again, I’m not saying heroin is a good decision. I’m saying if we want to deal with addiction as a society we have to understand both what causes people to become addicted in the first place as well as what keeps them from getting help. If telling people “go to therapy” is all it took there wouldn’t be a problem.