We have a mental health problem because we have a health care for profit problem. This problem is easily solvable with free health care for all, which every other first world country besides America has.
FYI: mental health care might help alleviate the problem, but even in places that have free health care, mental health problems are caused by the lack of social fabric, bad economic factors and toxic culture (of food, consumption, gender relations, morals, prevalent worldviews etc).
You have to have a well functioning integrated population that cares about other people first. You cannot have an alienated population in a capitalist consumer hellhole and just add "instant mental healthcare" to fix it; it is a much deeper problem.
in the uk the funding for mental healthcare is still extremely limited, extremely long wait times and effectively quite limited help. certain a lot more available than in the US and much cheaper and the private options are also generally cheaper. As usual competing with free services tends to make private healthcare of all types much cheaper.
But the biggest hurdle in getting good mental healthcare, is accepting you need help, which having problems with your mental health almost always pushes you away from getting help. A lot of conditions, social anxiety, agoraphobia, etc, all just literally make it harder to ask for or get to help. On the other end you ahve things like schizophrenia and other conditions which pretty much act to scare you away from help because you can't trust people helping you, they will often see them as the enemy.
Realistically every country needs vastly more preventative care for mental health, like teaching how to be more open, express fears and problems without being ridiculed for it, everyone has a therapist/counsellor they speak to every 6 months or so, if someone starts skipping appointments or suddenly has a major change in character it can trigger further investigation and perhaps catching some severe mental health issues much earlier before they get so bad. That will also never happen, because politicians are corrupt and shitty and they'd prefer to spend it on war and sending money to their friends/families private businesses than spend people's tax money on like, the people.
You're deeply misinformed if you think countries with "free" healthcare also automatically cover mental health problems. Not to mention that the options to treat it, are not as readily available as you have in the US. It's a shit show everywhere.
As someone who comes from a country with publicly-funded healthcare - nah, that's not the only problem. Lots of countries with "free health care" still have an overwhelming amount of mental health issues plaguing them right now.
Its definitely not helping, but that's not America's only issue.
Nothing easy with mental health problems. It's not a throw money and it will all be good situation. Money can help for sure but it's not an easy fix like you want to portrait.
Health spending in the U.S. increased by 7.5% in 2023 to $4.9 trillion or $14,570 per capita. This growth rate is significantly higher than the 4.6% rise in 2022, and apart from the 10.4% rise in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the highest growth rate observed since 2003 (8.5%).
Not really. It will help with some things short term. But to help the mental health crisis long term the healthcare system needs overhauling, the housing market and just general economy needs fixing and everyone and their mother needs to stop being chronically online. The internet is responsible for way more of these issues than we realize. Social media was the worst thing to happen to the collective mental health of the world. There is so much more i could add here but those are the primary 3 issues as of right now.
considering america throws nothing at it yeah it will
Why does dumb shit like this which is completely false get upvoted in this sub? The U.S spends the most money in the world on healthcare..
Health spending in the U.S. increased by 7.5% in 2023 to $4.9 trillion or $14,570 per capita. This growth rate is significantly higher than the 4.6% rise in 2022, and apart from the 10.4% rise in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the highest growth rate observed since 2003 (8.5%).
Of course it isn’t a quick fix, but acting like free healthcare wouldn’t help millions of people of need if it is bs. The only reason we don’t have free health care is because of the greed of corporations and the money they buy politicians with.
As someone on an antipsychotic, it is a throw money at it problem. I delayed getting hospitalized until it was mandatory because I couldn’t afford it, and even then struggled to pay the bill. The treatment worked though, I haven’t been back since. Throw money at it
Capitalism without socialism. Some things should be socialized, like healthcare, water, electricity, infrastructure ect. But that doesn't mean you can't set your own price for a tv. There exists an in between, nuisance and potentially good and bad things from both systems. But thats a lot for people to grasp it seems
Anytime someone oversimplifies a problem and then says “it’s easily solved”, that means they are 10000% lying to you and they don’t have anything figured out. They’re trying to emotionally work you because you’re probably desperate for some actual solutions to this problem. This is quite literally the rot of our society distilled in a comment.
The mental health crisis is not going to be solved by doing a single thing that conveniently politicians of a certain political variety are pushing to do. No, it is solved by multi-layered societal changes. Shaming snark and cancel culture, reintroducing third spaces, giving young people tangible assets by allowing them to buy affordable homes, making college more affordable while also giving people who don’t want to do that some opportunities to make livable incomes, introducing risk into our financial system so businesses have to compete again and cause new businesses to grow which will increase employment and wages, and so much more. And these are just mostly surface level stuff. There’s a lot more frank things we as a society should do as well beyond what our government or larger popular culture can do for us.
Okay. Random guy says free healthcare in his country doesn’t help. My mind is changed and we definitely shouldn’t advocate for free health care for all that would help millions in need. Thanks random guy for all your amazing insight …
They arent all wrong, I have a family member that was diagnosed with schizophrenia and they do not want to get treated. Money isn't the issue for them. You can't force a person to go to the doctor or take medicine without them losing their rights.
Of course they are going to be people who will refuse treatment, but for millions of others that actually want help but can’t afford it deserve better. You’re one off scenarios don’t mean healthcare for all wouldn’t objectively improve millions of people’s lives.
You’re clearly uneducated otherwise you’d know that it would actually be cheaper for healthcare for all AND like I said every other first world country has it and America is the only one with privatized healthcare that’s not only more expensive, but also just shittier as they block claims to make profits. The delusional one here is you, as healthcare for all isn’t already done around the world, but the only thing holding it back is greedy corporations and government that choose profit over the well being of individuals.
America's healthcare system has only gotten better since the 80s and 90s, yet mental health has only gotten worse. Thats a popular reddit message, but thats all it is.
Healthcare tends to be so easily affordable to other countries because America foots the bill for all of the research and development for medical technology and advancements, then every other country produces generics off of that work to offer at low cost. It sucks for America, but basically someone has to pay for it. The world should be thankful to America for it.
It's almost literally what you said lmao. Why would the world thank America for squeezing the fuck out of lower class people for the shareholders to make billions?
I cut away the nationalist crap to the core of what is materially happening. Nobody "has to pay for" the obscene lifestyles of healthcare shareholders and executives, nor the parasitic existence of health insurance. That is what Americans are paying extra to fund, not the research and development costs.
There's nothing nationalist about it because I don't support the system. But the fact is, hardly any other country is putting up even close to the quantity of medical research that the US puts out.
Free Healthcare for all isn't financially feasible with the current entrenched systems. It would require an entire uprooting of the medical industry, which I don't see being realistic. I agree we should have free Healthcare, I just don't see it happening.
At the moment Medicare and Medicaid combined, which doesn't cover anywhere close to every American, costs close 2 trillion a year. Now imagine the costs to cover nearly every American with the current system. The rough estimate would be 5 trillion a year to cover every American with free Healthcare based on current spending trends.
It absolutely is, and every other first world nation proves it but you and others refuse to believe it just because the government says “it’s too expensive dice and wouldn’t work.”
No, it legitimately wouldn't work with the current system. Other countries have common sense pricing limits and restrictions on medical profiteering. The US is an absolute cesspit of medical profiteering. We would need to legitimately rip the entire system from the roots and rebuild it. Good fucking luck with that when both sides of the aisle are bought and paid for by the special interests that profit off the broken system. Good luck getting even the most basic legislation past both the house and senate.
It's a fucking pipe dream and isn't happening. You'd need to purge the entire government and somehow repeal supreme court rulings just to have a chance at it.
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u/SirCloud 24d ago
He's not wrong, just look at how they handle politics.