Since my diagonosis with severe ocd their has been a fear besides living with a mental health disorder that thrives on fear that has at times equaled my disorder in panic and sadness, that is getting mental health treatment in the USA.
At a time where I believe mental health advocates should be pushing for free mental health care and/or affordable healthcare to deal with the trauma of the pandemic we are all dealing with I find myself being dropped from another program that treats OCD because of the protocols set up at the teaching/experimentation system of OCD care that takes patients who cannot afford 300 dollar per 50 min therapy with the promise of making them well but with not stats or sucess rate to back that claim (If you ever want to suprise a therapist ask them their sucess rate ) and then either experiments on them or has them work with undergraduate psychological students.
This can be a decent exchange when you have a mild case of ocd even though the ideal would be to live in a country that does not profit on sickness. And its understandable that training and experimentation are needed for their to be treatments at all but I do think it's slightly unfair to do it on the backs or the poor and middle class.
If you are wealthy you can go to residential treatment, you can go to a top OCD specialist get assessed at 900 dollars and then pay the 300 per session and after 6 months be assured you got the best OCD care there was. If I had it I would not be writing this. OCD is a dream killer, a life waster, a horrible disorder, think of what you would pay to get rid of OCD, how desperate it makes you, people get labotomies, shock treatment, and can take up three ssri medications if a genie came along many would give up there last cent to rid themselves of this disorder and some do.
The charitable organizations are concentrating on stigma control when in reality it would be affordability that is the most helpful to the masses of people, 800,000, that have sever OCD. What makes it sadder is that some charities have the top residential ocd specialists on their boards but the residential centers are still quite unaffordable, you would think that those who have the power to give help would try to make treatment more affordable but that has not happened yet. I'd rather have a person without ocd say "I'm so ocd" if it meant I could afford OCD treatment in the weatlthiest country in the world.
So here I am at the tail end of scrounged up ocd care hoping to find the next lily pad to hop on, but after so many years of trying to get adequate care I'm giving up because its adding to my stress, anxiety, and making me worse.
To anyone who has read this I appreciate your time. I hope one day their is affordable treatment in the USA for severe OCD.