Professional helps is essential in helping anyone through challenges like depression, anxiety, and addiction. But some feel that they can’t find a way to pay for it.
However, in my experience, when most people say that they can’t afford any mental health treatment, they are really saying that investing in mental health care has not been a priority. Statistically, more people are willing to pay for astrology, and fortune-telling, than for professional mental health therapy. Many other people simply are not aware of the resources that are available to them. So here is a list of the main sources of payment for mental health treatment.
1. Public Assistance:
Someone that is destitute has access to programs like Medicaid or Medicare that do pay for treatment. The access and quality of most of these programs don’t meet the standards of most people, but they are free.
2. Sliding Scale Fee :
People in real financial need can have access to very high-quality therapy with high-level therapists and programs that use sliding scale pricing. The payment is based on what the person earns. In these cases, it becomes possible to get a session for as low as $10 or $20. The income of the person receiving this price is verified to weed out those that truly need it from those who want to take advantage.
Sliding scales are part of therapists and doctors ethical demand of devoting some of our time to working pro bono cases. In these cases, people are awarded scholarships to use for professional help.
3. Health Insurance Benefits:
Most health insurance companies cover mental health treatment. Some of them pay benefits that compensate the best providers, some pay so little that high-quality providers cannot afford to service the people that bought these policies. This is usually the case with HMOs, which restrict people to only being able to receive care from a group of providers, with whom they negotiated low rates of compensation. These providers usually have to see a lot of people to be able to stay in business. This can result in lower quality of care
Now that the importance of mental health awareness is growing, we need to bring into perspective where our priorities are and leverage the resources available to us to get the help we need. Raising our awareness as consumers of mental health treatment can secure access to high-quality care for ourselves and our families. It’s a matter of priorities.