It scares me a lot to know that the very people that we trust to help us (and many times we feel that are our only hope) could be taking advantage of our state of weakness and need. That would be the last joke and blunder.
But I don't think that is the case any more than patients want to get away with something. Greed is an unconscious element at work in both therapists and patients, as i tried to illustrate. It does not negate the genuine desire to be of service to patients. We are all fallible and human, no matter how deeply we care about each other.
I'm sorry I overreacted, but when you speak that Charles Nemeroff lied, that there has been manipulation of data and results on research, that therapists are trained in CBT because it is most easily regulated and controlled by the insurance companies, that in fact the entire system is built on greed, I think is not just a question of greed as an inconscious element, but a system which is built to ripp off the ones it should help, even if the majority of the therapists have a genuine desire to help the patients. With this, I don't mean that therapy doesn't worth the money spent, but I think that many more people could be helped if the system was built in another way, and I'm very curious to see what the new mental health parity law will bring.
Mental health parity *may* open the door to longer term treatment but that is far from definite.
I disagree with you that the whole system is rigged "to rip off the ones it should help". The whole system now is built on a model that works well for some things and poorly for others and because it is a very complex system involving the interests of patients, professionals,insurance companies, and drug companies, just to name some of those involved, it ends up not serving as well as it could.
I don't see how you could build a system where highly qualified professionals provided therapeutic services without patients having to pay. They either pay directly or indirectly via insurance premiums or taxes. Right now, the system runs on indirect or third party payment. And, it remains the fact that he who pays the piper picks the tune. Insurance companies pay the bills so they decide what treatments to cover. The only way the patient has freedom to choose what he or she wants is to be the one who pays the bill. And that is where a kind of greed on the part of the patient enters in because patients want to pay as little as possible.
It's easy to point a finger at the system but it is important to remember that patients are part of that system and participate in both its rewards and its negative aspects.
Commenting by HaloScan
