Would you make yourself more accessible to receive and seek out therapy if it made itself more accessible to you?
Ever since I’ve been making conscious efforts to understand the enigma that is mental health (and its many demons, mine included) – seeking solutions by way of reaching out to mental health professionals has been high on my checklist. Except that I’ve not had a formal session, yet!
Is this shameful? I don’t know. I use the word ‘shameful’ because it has been a little over a year since I considered that I might require professional help; there have been patterns I’ve noticed, owing to my life’s happenings and state of mind. Often, during my better moments, the voice in my head says things like, “You handled that, you have a good grasp of things, now.” Maybe I did, maybe I was good – I genuinely felt that I overcame whatever it was that was plaguing me. I realise belatedly at some point that it was kind of like a white lie you tell yourself. (One of my other excuses was that therapy simply wasn’t affordable on a freelancer’s income.)
While it’s good to be at a place when you’re feeling courageous enough to set up an appointment and talk to a counsellor, there’s still that niggling doubt at the back of your mind. How affordable will this be? One of the ways that therapy has been stigmatised is that it’s often branded as an unnecessary ‘luxury’. This, unfortunately, supplements the belief that mental health isn’t meant to be taken seriously.
Despite these hiccups, I do believe I’ve found a method to the madness. Or rather, it found me! – To spit it out, counsellors and therapists are consciously making their services more accessible to all kinds of folks (covering various issues, even the ones embedded deep in your closets):
#PayWhatYouWant
Establishing #PayWhatYouWant pricing models work in the way of people paying a minimum fee to chat with or e-mail a counsellor/therapist (this is for individuals who aren’t financially sound). – What you pay for a session might be close to what you pay for a coffee at your favourite café.
Conducting Counselling at Fixed Rates
I discovered this, last year whereby you pay a fixed amount (usually Rs. 500) for a session (a time period is fixed, too) that is conducted electronically via audio/video calls.
Building Communities, Offline and Online
Lately, I’ve been seeing crowd-sourced sheets of mental health professionals doing the rounds on Twitter. Compiled in a spread-sheet, these lists are comprehensive: they cover the expertise and skill-set of therapists including their areas of work and which Indian cities they are based in to how much they charge for a session too. – This works for the young’uns out there who have no resources or loved ones to talk to about what their issues.
All of this brings us to the forefront of another worthy conversation: How accessible is therapy to the common folk? (Folks unlike you and me who might not have the internet on their side, and/or live in remote areas.) How must we create awareness in those spaces? – We also must recall that in terms of therapy itself, there’s so much out there from information to practitioners and the methods/medication they prescribe.
We mustn’t write off something entirely because, especially when it comes to mental illness, what works for me might not – for you.
About the author-
Deeply fond of black coffee, dawdling at bookstores and snail mail (receiving and sending) – Roanna Fernandes likes all things simple and somehow quaint. She hopes to open her own shop of curiosities, one day and fill it with all that she creates and curates.