How to Get Mental Health Treatment if You Can't Afford It
As the number of people diagnosed with mental health issues, such as depression, rises to new highs, the need for medical services to treat them is growing, too. Approximately 56 percent of American adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment. There's also evidence of a dire lack of treatment among teens, with the CDC reporting that the suicide rate for teens is skyrocketing. Why aren't people getting the help they need? The answer is complicated. On one hand, there's the lingering stigma around mental illness that may hinder people from seeking care (a problem that campaigns like Mental Health Awareness Month aim to solve), but there's also the fact that our health care system has yet to treat mental health as comprehensively as it does physical health. There's no such thing as an insurance-covered annual mental health exam for instance, and therapists who do accept insurance are often working twice as hard just to get reimbursed by providers.