[jwestbury]

Just want to offer some additional context here: "in the US" isn't really necessary. Mental health care is generally broken everywhere. Over here in the UK, waiting lists for "talking therapy" are long, and access is limited. Same story for most other countries with socialised healthcare. And, often, mental health care is even more stigmatised than it is in the US (where at least there's fairly broad societal acceptance, at least amongst younger generations).

Further, while the US is seeing major shortages of mental health care providers, most European countries are even worse off, in large part because there's no class of master's-degree-holding therapists -- you either get a doctoral-level degree, or you just attend some basic courses and call yourself a therapist with no licensing or regulatory bodies governing your practice.

I'd actually argue that the US's system is better than most other western nations' mental health care systems -- which is not a statement in favour of the US, but an indictment of other nations' approaches.

(Source for my data and opinions here: I'm an American immigrant to the UK, and my wife has a master's degree in clinical mental health counselling - she only practised for about a year before she quit because the system is so broken in the US.)