Aren mental health benefits abused?
There are historical factors that left many people with the idea that mental health benefits are abused. Indeed, they were, some of the time, by certain parties. Much of the abuse was perpetrated by private psychiatric hospitals that hospitalized people unnecessarily, and for weeks at a time. Often, the criterion for hospitalization and discharge seemed to be the amount of insurance the person had, not the clinical needs of the person. This cost employers huge sums of money in rising premiums. Unfortunately, all mental health care got tarnished, even though the cost of outpatient psychotherapy is a fraction of the cost of inpatient treatment. In fact, using a conservative estimate of $800 per day for hospitalization and a standard yearly allotment of 30 days of inpatient treatment, someone could be in weekly psychotherapy for 6-9 years for the cost of one hospital stay. Furthermore, a typical client is actually in psychotherapy for less than 6 months. When someone is in treatment longe
