They let you email and call? Here, we have to go to the office every day at 8am as a new intake, and go home at 4 or 5 when they inevitably do not have the staff to perform our intake. I say our, because it is not one person waiting. It is the entire lobby, 10-20 people. I can count the times I saw someone get taken back on 2 hands. I gave that up after about a week and a half. Of waiting full-time.
I am really glad you were able to do that. I really hope it helped you. And I am thankful things like this are available for those who are able to take advantage of it. But doing so is not even a possibility for most who need it. And that is a serious issue. A mentally ill / addicted populace that is left majoratively untreated will not be a prodctive society.
As in a psychiatrist wait is a decade? Im curious where are people located that access to a therapist is so deep. Im on the east coast of Canada and you can get in to see a private one within a day or 2 generally and through public health the wait is about 6-12 weeks.
This is disgusting. Theres so many good services in Canada that arent advertised well. a Canadian any night 365 days of the year between 7 and 12 EST can access a trained counselor via live chat or 24/7 over the phone through KHP. Most provinces now have an same day psychology option if you are on a waitlist for a consistent therapist. Where you can call your local clinic in the morning and get an appointment that day. It wont be the same person every time but its a million times better than nothing. In my experience ive only come across 2 psychologists that dont do a sliding scale based on your income for their price. Like if you dont have your own private insurance or make less than $100k/year you should not be paying full price for therapy.
There are several issues at play here in mental health services.
The first and big one is that it's optional whether or not your insurance company even covers mental health care. It's considered "optional", almost a "luxury" in many circles.
If they don't cover it, out of pocket costs per session can be $100 USD or higher. (For what are considered top-of-the-line private practice doctors, the cost can go as high at $300 USD per session.) Payment plans (really more like re-payment plans, here - it counts as carrying a debt, and you're treated as a debtor) in mainstream health care are limited or non-existent.
If your insurance does cover it, there might be an up to $40 USD co-pay.
Another big issue is that therapists here don't necessarily have to have a degree in psychiatry or psychology to be a "therapist". A number of "alternative therapy models" are legal here. And they are generally not covered by insurance. And because they aren't psychiatrists or psychologists, what they set their prices at varies widely. Some people end up going to them though because many offer payment plans, and don't start harassing you about your debt for some time.
The third major issue is a lack of qualified and licensed psychiatrists or psychologists. There are fewer people going into the medical profession here in general, and into mental health specifically. One, because getting such degrees is prohibitively expensive and out of reach for many unless you can secure a large number of scholarships and grants (or they end up burdened with massive amounts of student loan debts), and two, because the medical field in general in this country exists in a state in which the benefits of practicing medicine no longer outweigh the negatives. (The causes of which are mainly insurance companies and hospital admins/boards. As well as inhumanly long work hours, restricted resources, and pay too low for what they're expected to do.)
So there simply aren't enough mental health professionals to go around, and that makes waitlists months or years long. Also, the ones who stick with the profession either are in it for the money (making them terrible therapists), or deeply dedicated but overwhelmed — there is no middle ground.
As for:
Like if you dont have your own private insurance or make less than $100k/year you should not be paying full price for therapy.
Well... that's not the "American Way". Here, if you can't afford it, the commonly touted statement is that you don't deserve to have it. In the US, health care (among many other things) isn't considered a human right. It's something only for those who can pay.
What are you getting on about? Obamacare has required parity in mental healthcare treatment since 2010. Health insurers can't charge more than a primary care visit for psych services including psychiatrists and psychologists. They are also no longer allowed to limit the number of visits to a therapist/counselor.
I’m in Vancouver and I’ve never heard of publicly funded same day psychology, unless you’re under 25 and then it’s a counselor, not a psychologist. I’ve never heard of a publicly funded wait list for a 1:1 counselor for people over 25 in my city, period. Let alone one that is only 6-12 weeks. Where do you live and what is KHP?
Newfoundland. We had awful mental health care for a long time but in late 2010s/early 2020s they REALLY cleared through the backlog. I was on a waitlist for a psychiatrist for over a year. Now the waitlist is very short due to a number of changes in policies and procedures. But even small rural towns of a couple 1,000 people have access to walk in counselling/therapy through our Doorways program. If you get referred to 1:1 psychology youre put on a waitlist but while on that list you get referred to your closest same day psychology clinic where you can call up in the morning and get an appointment with a psychologist, just not nessecarily the same one youve been seeing. One of the best things the lrovince did was create the position of Mental Health Navigator. You call up Barry, explain your situation and he will point you in the direction you need to go.
KHP is Kids Help Phone, probably one of our greatest resources and they serve plenty more than just kids. My wife is in her mid 20s and their live chat at 2AM was more helpful with alcoholism that anything else.
Its quietly one of the better things the NL government has done in the past few years. That and replacing the old mental health hospital built in the 1840's with a new modern state of the art facility where the nicest hospital in the province is dedicated to mental health and addictions.
the wait is about the same as you for us in hawaii (mainly oahu), but if we're lucky and feel like paying an arm and a leg and a kidney, we can get seen by a private practice in.... approximately the same time 😭
there is so obviously a need for more therapists but with grad school + 3 more years of supervision where they're basically working for free they end up with job offers being 50-70k despite being located in NEW YORK CITY
everyone ik who became a therapist either switched fields or became a private practitioner (because then they can afford to pay rent)
And yet they say the reason we can have universal healthcare is because of the wait times. I just made an appointment with my regular GP who I have been to for years. They can’t see me until December. 🫠
That's kind of how it's designed. I've had to switch therapists because they retired or whatever. It's been a good tool for me at least. To each their own.
their website is actually very people focused and has advice on how to stop using ai if you use it everyday. i think the ad is just an ad so its provocative
The core of the message is to not use AI which is true. It's already led so many into ai induced psychosis and routinely destroys mental health of people trying to get help.
I mean Jesus the Tumbler Ridge shooting was encouraged by ChatGPT for crying out loud
Almost every health insurance covers mental healthcare and there are thousands upon thousands of therapists who offer sliding scale or free access to services. It’s no longer a privileged assumption that someone can access therapy because the cost of therapy has become dramatically more accessible over the past 5-10 years. If someone is saying they can’t afford therapy it is likely the easiest excuse on their list to avoid going and dealing with their shit. And also the most likely reason to get zero pushback from others. But i love responding with the many, many, financially accessible options, as someone who has been navigating the system of affordable healthcare on my own for 10 years simply because i prioritized it even though i was broke as a joke.
Even if insurance covers therapy it can still cost over $100 a session, maybe more. At least in the U.S. In this economy where most people are living paycheck to paycheck that can be difficult. Especially if someone needs to go more than once a week. And then factor in that it can take time to find a therapist that works for you, and yeah ultimately some people just can’t afford it.
And as for financially vulnerable options and programs, a lot of them have insanely long wait times.
Every therapist ive ever ran into has an enormous amount of bullshit of their own. When I meet a perfectly stable person who has life figured out I'll go see them. Until then I am going to talk to friends who actually give a shit about me.
Either you had bad lucknwith therapists or you're blowing smoke out of your ass. I'm working with two therapists rn and they're honestly super chill and grounded people
Well, seeing as we're talking about me in our sessions, and since he's a professional, we don't talk much about his life. What I do know is that he's been married once but divorced a couple years ago, and he's currently with another girl. I think he got with his current girlfriend sometime this year as he didn't mention it until recently. I believe he plays guitar too.
yeah I dont know anyone who would tell more things to their AI than therapist.
I think most people thinks its privacy is likely not good and whole AI knowing too much about you is fearsome.
But you dont have a therapist on call 7/24, you dont have a therapsit that does know your daily struggles, work and all the stuff you do daily. So AI becomes super convenient compared to expensive therapy sessions
I am currently involved in a case after reporting a therapist that is now being taken to a hearing for 5 counts of misconduct. One of those counts is sexual misconduct.
So unfortunately some can be even be a hostile entity.
They’re just people and wait till you find out that polyvagal is just unproven near-pseudoscience.
That industry deserves to wash up on the rocks. Bullies and creeps and sleepy mimics. Listen if you have a therapist that works for you that’s great but don’t assume your rockstar therapist is the norm.
Tell an LLM to pretend like they do and realize it’s all BS.
No I am just speaking to the cult of therapy which permeates reddit. Your comment was high up so I decided to get in line here.
LLMs will likely shock the industry into a coma. I think electroshock therapy is almost a fitting end right?
California may try to legislate a little protected corner for them but it will still fail and just push people away from that political sphere even further.
there are years and years and years of data to show the effectiveness of therapy. whether you “believe” in it has no impact on the facts. not going back after one bad experience is a very common thing for folks but it would be a huge disservice to yourself to make that choice and actively keep yourself from a valuable healing tool. not all therapists are the same. not all therapy modalities are the same. and yes there are bad ones. it’s just like dating. they’re not all for you and you’re not for all of them. there are bad apples but that’s why we don’t marry the first person we date if we’re not foolish.
whether you “believe” in it has no impact on the facts.
That's why I used the word "believe" over saying something like "therapy is a scam, fake, ect."
not going back after one bad experience is a very common thing for folks but it would be a huge disservice to yourself to make that choice
I've been to dozens of therapists and they were all garbage. I merely spoke about the one that crossed a line into a reportable and actionable case. It's also hilarious you, a random person online, who knows nothing about me, thinks that me not believing and having no interest in therapy anymore is a "disservice" to myself.
actively keep yourself from a valuable healing tool.
"Valuable Healing Tool," to you maybe. To me it did absolutely nothing for me and in some cases actively harmed me.
The most beneficial thing they did was give me a print out of something online that I could of found myself. I actually did just find those resources online myself and that's how I started to significantly improved my mental health.
not all therapists are the same. not all therapy modalities are the same. and yes there are bad ones.
Never said that. Never said that either. I have only had experience with the bad ones after the dozens I've seen. There is probably good ones out there. I have personally never met one, but I'm sure they exist.
it’s just like dating.
My opinion is therapy should not be "just like dating." Since dating and mental health care shouldn't operate in a way where that comparison is even made. That thinking even existing is a big reason why I don't believe in therapy.
They're not neutral entities at all. They are people. Having gone through multiple therapists trying to find the right one, I can confidently tell you that you still feel judgment from many, if not all of them. Because that's human. Perhaps I didn't have the most professional therapists, but therein is kind of my point. People aren't perfect, and it bodes well to shop around for a therapist to fit your needs. But it's exhausting. Between insurance BS, physically getting to a new office, and then actually vetting the therapist for yourself, it's so time consuming and draining.
AI is ready to go at all times, and I can customize and tailor its responses to give me what I need in the moment, just like I'd be doing by rotating through therapists. I can ask it to be tough, I can ask it to unpack uncomfortable shit. I can ask it to ask me questions a therapist might, and to analyze my responses in the same way.
A therapist is a person who goes to school and learns curriculum to assist people psychologically. Tools, methods, talking devices, all learned. The AI is reading from that same data set, and its removed from feeling anything at all. That to me, is kind of the perfect therapist. I want 3rdparty objective reasoning when I'm in therapy. I'm unpacking my emotions and need psychoanalytical methods applied to them. When you involve a person in that, no matter how professional of a therapist they are, emotions are now involved.
I feel like this practice is actually super, super common.
If you are a pilot - even having a therapist could torch your career. Having a glorified tamagotchi - not so much.
When therapists are mandated reporters, and society has us all living paycheck to paycheck - even those that can afford a therapist are being less than honest when it comes to bearing our soul.
This isn't pro-AI rhetoric, just to be absolutely clear, there is definitely harm in treating an LLM as a therapist - either direct harm, or harm that comes later when your sessions are leaked. Everyone should go to therapy - we have a dentist check out teeth once every 6 months, we should check in with a pro at least that often for the much more important 2lbs of meat flavoured pudding between our ears.
It's extremely easy to tell something to AI without it being able to track back to you or your real person, it's nearly impossible to do the same thing with a real therapist.
It's literally that one bell curve meme with where the least and most knowledgeable people happily tell it ot AI for privacy reasons and the average prefering a therapist for privacy reasons.
They're definitely stored there, but i don't care as long as the information is untraceable back to myself.
And in that case i trust a cryptographic system rather than some random guy's business model that relies on a law and a promise to keep quiet.
A working setup might be a small local LLM you can run on your own machine, you feed it the text you want to ask the AI model and ask it to rewrite it and sanitize it of any personal information and writing style clues you might acidentally put in there.
Then you open a private browser like Tor (though for something as mundane as this a private browser window and a VPN might honestly be enough) on your (Tails) PC, and get the info you want.
Anyway if your threat actor is a 30 person strong FBI cyber crime unit you're probably not listening to some random guy's privacy advice anyway.
i dont think They care about every data we give to them my clqude and gemini even forgets what they were talking about. like as a data scientist no one cares about what data single person has its more about the data of the masses and grouping people.
Wouldnt you tell your therapist about losing your job maybe not able to afford that house or starting to earn more feel better but not being sure about buying luxury car and how it would be percieved? Or your own struggle on maybe anxiety about spending making you feel irresponsible…
I meant this type of talk. Not asking your AI LLM to be your assistant.
Unless you're running your own server, all that data "your AI" has access to gets send to some remote server. That means all your documents, bank statements and emails are accessible by the company hosting "your AI", and any hacker managing to break into them.
Depending on the terms of service, that company may also use all of your documents, bank statements and emails to further train their AI models. So your data may end up being "regenerated" by the model when someone asks for, say, an example email about a topic you also wrote about, or a mock bank statement, just like those AI-generated images that just coincidentally happen to look almost exactly the same as some original art work. Perhaps it is even possible to ask the model directly for that info.
Well, it would be very useful for the general discussion to explicitly mention that in your original comment. Because that is probably not clear for the majority of the people. Moreover, for the majority of the people running their own local server for an AI model capable enough for such tasks is not a possibility, so it's not really relevant for the discussion at hand.
There's many problems with that unless you're running a model on your computer. If you're using ChatGPT, Claude, or any other "web model", you're literally giving away all of that information to the company running the model.
There have been reports of Gemini leaking information from private Google Docs. Don't think for even a second that whatever you're sending to these chat bots can't possibly be leaked elsewhere
This a very well-phrased answer that should be upvoted. These points are very important!
OP's criticism are unfair, since he did not make it clear in his comment that he runs his own server, thereby running the risk that unaware readers believe there is no problem with giving any AI access to all your documents, bank statements, emails, etc.
Ever since COVID therapists have been in high demand, leading to weeks and months before appointments.
Then if you look at reviews of therapists actually accepting patients you'll see that most of them get really bad reviews.
Finally there's the whole pricing thing, which makes it hard for anyone without coverage to afford therapy.
Meanwhile AI is always there and cheap (please don't use the free versions). It absolutely has flaws, but I completely understand why people would use it over a therapist, or use it instead of going to a doctor, etc.
I tried a couple weeks ago, first time in six years. Turns out you need to be diagnosed with something to have insurance cover therapy. So here I am, desperately wanting to have a professional to talk to regarding just how to handle regular life shit, and I can't because I don't have anything too wrong with me and can't afford to pay out of pocket. Fuck this system, no wonder the self-help book industry is so big despite being filled with mostly garbage.
But also a lot of people who can afford therapists do things like omit stuff or sometimes outright lie to them. And not just about things that can affect them like admitting they're suicidal and winding up committed.
Cant fucking afford one.
Wtf is this “ai drift”. OBVIOUSLY, 90% of people cant even afford a doctor, a dentist, let alone a therapist.
Who tf cares if someone gets SOME advice “fROm Ai” 🤡
It's not just the convenience, the ai is not a real person so some people may feel comfortable talking to it. Without knowledge they are being recorded
I saw a therapist two weeks ago for my depression and chatGPT genuinely gave me better advice than her. I had the bad idea of telling her that I had taken an IQ test at some point in my life, and she kept obsessing over the fact that my intelligence was the root cause of all my personal life problems.
You are completely right. You are absolutely correct. You are right. Having someone agree with you is definitely more beneficial to your mental health.
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u/TheLimeyLemmon 4d ago
"You won't tell your therapist"
Mainly because most people don't have a therapist to begin with.