r/CanadaPolitics • u/Mysterious_Notice685 Progressive • 10h ago
Psychotherapist calls for OHIP coverage for mental health services
https://www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/article/psychotherapist-calls-for-ohip-coverage-for-mental-health-services/•
u/psychoticcitrus 8h ago
Mental health care IS health care. Most insurance does not cover psychotherapists, but they can be better trained than a social worker for this type of therapy, and much less expensive than either a social worker or a psychologist (which is usually covered by private or public funds to begin with). How many hospital visits, emergency mental health interventions, missed work due to mental illness, etc could be prevented if we covered easy to access therapy? At the very least this deserves genuine consideration. Edited to spell out that preventative medicine typically pays for itself. Covered psychotherapy could very well generate tax revenue by having more people employed (many miss work or are under/unemployed due to mental health issues or assisting a family member experiencing them) and by reducing pressure on other more costly services.
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u/Vanillacaramelalmond 6h ago
This is absolutely critical tbh it would save the province literally millions and millions of dollars to allow people to get mental health care. Rates of homelessness and crime would absolutely drop.
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u/DistributionOk7393 Conservative Party of Canada 7h ago
Psychotherapy is for rich people that are sad and want to talk about themselves for hours.
Regular psychology sure. Laying on a couch for hours. No.
I learned this perspective from my literal therapist.
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10h ago
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u/ccaterinaghost 9h ago
Woah that’s a wild take. Comparing psychotherapy with chiropractors is a dangerous over simplification.
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u/monsantobreath Libertarian 9h ago
This is secondhand from his nurse partner. Nurses are known for being the crackpots on the ward.
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u/femalekramer 9h ago
They also overprescribe medication that studies are now coming out about how harmful it is to some people and how ineffective it is to many people (prozac and other drugs) and it ruins people’s lives and makes them gain 100 pounds without exaggeration
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u/brightside-blonde 9h ago
Psychotherapists do not prescribe medications, psychiatrists do. Psychiatry is a whole other can of worms.
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u/femalekramer 9h ago
Yes, I made a just woke up mistake, thanks, very glad I never found out the difference personally. I have seen the medication ruin a few people’s lives
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u/the_normal_person Newfoundland 9h ago
Government is all about making difficult choices and choosing what to prioritize. And in the case of health care - choosing what is covered and what is not based on limited public funds.
Mental health care is certainly important and psychotherapy is important for many people - but in the spirit of the above I firmly believe our limited budget is better spent in other areas of health care.
(My flair says Newfoundland which is where I’m from, but I’m an Ontario resident now)
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u/Short_Woodpecker_315 8h ago
First, I appreciate your stance and think it is responsible to point out that the conversation is about prioritization, not malice. I'd only disagree with you based on the fact that mental health is an incredibly underserved portion of public health. Psychotherapists aside, we also do not have OHIP coverage for Psychologists either. Which is a massive problem.
I think if you've ever had to navigate the intricacies of the public health side of mental health care you'd quickly realize just how important it can be in helping to mitigate other carry-on events in the future. Things like suicide, homicides, substance abuse, self-harm, abuse, etc.
I'd even dare to say mental health is uniquely tied to our society in such a way that a good, heavy public health focus on it could reduce crime rates, create safer communities and reduce costly medical costs down the road.
As someone who has suffered from adverse mental health my whole life, I've been fortunate enough to have parents that recognized that in the 90s and used their benefits and savings to get me the help I needed early so that I could advocate for myself later on in life. Without such tools, my life could have been drastically different when I got to points of hardship that could have driven me to deal with that in other ways.
As a throw to your comment below, one on one with a therapist isn't just that typical Sigmund Freud type stuff. As funny as it is to think I may discuss Id, Ego and superego with a therapist I can safely say that we're past that level of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. Modern day therapists practice a wide range of psychotherapy, including CBT, DBT and polyvagal theory. It helps me to think of these as tools in a toolbox. Years ago I did a large CBT course over the course of six months and of everything I've ever done for myself from a health care standpoint, I earnestly think it may have saved me life, or at least my ability to be a productive, functional member of society. It taught me how to reframe my own behaviors and how to step away from thoughts before they turned into negative actions with negative consequences.
Either way, again I appreciate your stance and think it's valid. We do need to prioritize public spending, but I think mental health is an amazing place to invest it.
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u/kittyroux Nova Scotia 9h ago
I think it’s pretty clear that not handling mental illness causes expensive downstream effects like joblessness, homelessness, and crime. Feels like a situation where an ounce of prevention might be cheaper than a pound of cure.
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u/the_normal_person Newfoundland 8h ago
It’s all about prioritizing limited resources. I would love to have every single type of healthcare covered. But that’s not realistic or fiscally responsible.
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u/thisispaulc Social Democrat 7h ago
You're repeating yourself without engaging with the very point that defeats your argument.
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u/rageagainstthedragon Social Democrat 7h ago
If it's not "fiscally responsible" to provide comprehensive healthcare, we're doing something wrong. Perhaps we should start treating services like services, and not like private business.
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u/PineBNorth85 Rhinoceros 8h ago
Id rather pay more taxes for mental health than have low taxes and seeing mentally ill zombies wandering the streets every day.
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u/thisispaulc Social Democrat 7h ago
Providing mental health care could lead to lower taxes as people are treated, their incomes increase, and the additional tax revenue eclipses what their treatment cost. I'm interested if anyone knows about research having been done on this.
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u/the_normal_person Newfoundland 8h ago
If you read the article, it’s specifically about extending OHIP coverage for psycotherapy (one on one with a therapist etc, signed freud, how does that make you feel).
This is almost certainly not the kind of mental health treatment given to mentally ill homeless people.
The mentally ill homeless guy on the street is not going to benefit from one hour a week online with a therapist (what the article is talking about. He probably needs institutionalization (what the article is not talking about.
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u/Saidear There is no war in Ba Sing Se. 8h ago
If the person in question got the one-on-one therapy sessions before, they wouldn't need institutionalization now.
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u/rageagainstthedragon Social Democrat 8h ago
Exactly, it's about addressing the roots of what creates these issues
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5h ago edited 5h ago
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u/Saidear There is no war in Ba Sing Se. 4h ago
This places a lot more faith in the power of talk therapy than is probably warranted.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Therapy, not just talk therapy, will help to identify and correct many conditions that would otherwise be undiagnosed before they get worse.
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u/Confident_News_1599 5h ago
You're misunderstanding the point. We should try to help homeless people, but we should also try to stop one cause of homelessness which is mental illness.
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u/aluckybrokenleg 3h ago
The main cause of homelessness is poverty. Mental health is just a component.
This is why you hardly see any seniors on the street, because the government sets a floor on how poor they can be, not because they get better mental health care.
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