I am sure some of you here have had to deal with the mental health system in the past. And I am sure many of you have noticed how utterly shit it is. It seems like, no matter what country, the system is bloated and understaffed, and finding a good therapist is a miracle. As someone who has worked in the industry for over a year now and has been studying psychology for many years in school, I can tell you what the problem is. We no longer have asylums.

As the mental health of the western world continues to decline we are noticing that fewer and fewer people are up to the task to take care of the problem. Despite all of the money that is purported to be mobilized, the issue never seems to get any better. This is because of therapist burnout. Surprisingly, the vast majority of therapists are decent at their jobs and most start off quite well. However, the problem arises very quickly because therapy is one of those jobs that has extremely high burnout. The reasons for this are multifaceted. On the one hand, you are dealing with the acutely mentally ill every single day regardless of what your concentration is. If someone in the community knows that you are a therapist, they will leak out your number to anyone who they believe needs it. This means that many therapists get calls at all hours of the day from random people who insist that they help them and beg them due to the desperation of their situations. Many therapists have multiple phones for this very reason. As for suicide/mental health hotlines, the workers (normally volunteers) are spammed with calls from the same people over and over again because these people are acutely mentally ill and are made to live under supervised community management. What this means is that these people are given subsidized housing, a case worker, and are essentially let loose on society. (1)

Fuck off jannies, this is political.