I'm having a tough weekend, you know what would probably be bad for me but I'm gonna do it anyway? Ranting about how badly society fails people with mental illness when we're only kinda flirting with socialism!

I was singing the praises of universal health care on here recently but I didn't dig into the way that having some aspects of health care remain private is reeeeally extremely harmful and disproportionately harms those who are disabled and/or mentally ill

Because of course it's obvious that if you're disabled and/or mentally ill, you are in a position to both NEED the most assistance and also less likely to have the means to foot the bill for it.

I am not disabled but I do deal with mental illness. Aside from ADHD, which does make it harder for me to be educated and to perform in the workplace, I have a mood disorder with a frighteningly high suicide rate.

So I have a chronic (mental) illness with a fatality rate in the 10-20% rate. That's not great. Sometimes it severely inhibits my job performance... also not great! So far I've mostly succeeded in keeping a reasonable income, give or take some tough years around childbirth.

I can access some treatment for free. My family doctor can prescribe meds and "keep an eye on me," essentially. He would never let me leave his office without an honest answer as to how I was coping. Even if I was in the office for a twisted ankle or a bad cough.

Notice the past tense. He retired early in protest of the UCP's war on doctors. He was an incredibly kind and caring man. I miss him. Moving on, though. I'm also able to see a psychiatrist free of charge. But that is not easy.

For years I saw a psychiatrist who worked out of a hospital. Every visit would be at least an hour of waiting, followed by maybe ten minutes of mostly just assessing if I was suicidal and if my meds were doing me any serious harm. That was as deep as it could really get.

He wasn't neglecting me, he was just incredibly busy. Psychiatrists in a hospital deal with outpatients, inpatients, and emergency patients. Things come up. He wasn't spending his day in a chair chatting with patients for an hour at a time. He was a busy doctor.

I could've had more of his time if I were an inpatient or if I landed in the ER. But if you hold it together enough to stay out of the hospital, you are given truly the bare minimum to (maybe) maintain that. And if you don't, you become a MUCH bigger burden on the system.

At present day, I have a psychiatrist on paper. I have been unable to reach her for months. I asked the clinic where my doctor used to be for a new referral. They've been trying. No one will take me on. There is nobody. A GP I have never met is renewing my meds.

And let's talk about the meds! Fortunately, I have insurance through my husband's work. They cover 80%... sort of. 80% of what they figure my prescriptions ought to cost, which is... not what they cost. I'm thankful that lithium, which greatly reduces suicide risk, is cheap.

Extended-release Adderall, which makes me function well enough to maintain my much-needed income, is brand name and wildly expensive. I only take half of my prescribed dose, usually. It makes it last longer. I also have to pay for my meds up front and then request reimbursement.

But what REALLY makes me mad is the issue of therapy. Because EVERYONE agrees that the ideal treatment incorporates both medication and talk therapy, but talk therapy is NOT covered. Like most of my friends, I only have $500/year of coverage for it.

One 50-60 minute appointment costs about $200. So I get to have 2 1/2 hours paid for per year. I can see the reasoning here. It's for if you *really* need it, right? And *really* needing mental health support is basically defined as being suicidal.

So someone has decided that therapy is just not essential health care and you can only even access it with private extended health benefits for maybe just long enough to talk you down off a ledge. Fantastic. What could go wrong?

As in most aspects of health care we're just failing miserably at any kind of preventative care, despite it being painfully obvious that it would lower the overall burden on the system and improve everyone's quality of life. And people like me with the privilege and knowledge

to mostly manage pretty well will probably muddle through. But what if I were schizophrenic? What if having children had caused post-partum psychosis, a VERY real concern that I had that made me put off pregnancy for years?

It's too easy for someone who is "muddling through" to become someone who is a danger to themselves or others, or simply to lose the skills needed to care for themselves and end up homeless, or to develop substance abuse issues because street drugs are cheaper than pharmacies.

Meanwhile our government is attacking people with mental illness on AISH, implying they are simply lazy and need to get back into the workforce, while offering no solutions to better manage their conditions. It's disgusting.

I am obviously not on AISH and would NEVER qualify. Don't listen to Matt Wolf's bullshit. People aren't choosing the glamourous life of insultingly low disability benefits because they just feel like their depression or their ADHD make work "hard."

All of the stripping away of care and benefits does nothing to "encourage" people to "try harder" to be independent. People need help. Society exists to serve everyone, not just those who generate profit. Help people more, sooner. Help people more. Help people more.