I have to try to wiggle my way out of an appointment today because I can't afford it...I felt like I'd wasted the money to get told I was crazy....
Welcome to the club: Steerage-Class Citizenship™ aboard the US Ship of State. For some things, including dental care and mental health, our system is totally fend-for-yourself (unless it’s profound schizophrenia or intellectual disability, usually IQ < 55, or some other diagnoses
provided they’re established before 22nd birthday and you have evidence of
continuous diagnostic and care history from that date to now, etc., etc.). If you don’t have a good marketable skill, plan on a life of being uninsured and reliant on the indigent-charity care system—yet still with debt collectors seeking to extract whatever of your five-figure medical debts they can—in Blood from Turnips®.
And yeah: talk therapy
is a waste of time and money if you don’t have Platinum coverage. It’s gonna go below keeping the gas on this winter and getting that rotten tooth fixed before it, too, has to be pulled, leaving you to gum your meals down. Research hasn’t shown most psychotherapies to be
any more effective in most mental health conditions
than doing nothing beyond medications if indicated.
Sometimes you can get a referral from a crisis worker or the hospital psych ward for a limited number of sessions, typically six or eight. If you have specific goals to meet, a therapist
can be helpful in working on them.
Wishing you the best—and at least it’s not an African country where you live in a mud & wattle hut and walk three miles to get your water from the river. The world quite frankly sucks in the levels of inequality and poverty it not only finds excuses for, but celebrates at times—as when the newest Forbes 400 comes out to show how Mukesh Ambani is worth $22 billion and lives in a 27-story mansion boasting greater floor space than a Walmart Supercenter and Home Depot put together.
I won’t make assumptions or give advice as no Web site can care for your mental health needs—but Sinister Kid, posting above,
is correct to state that options exist for anyone, no matter who you are or what your situation is. If there were no options for you, having a discussion here would be pointless—you’d just go down, like a sick gazelle on the Serengeti. And looking for those options is gonna take some effort and work only you can supply. Effort is hard to do with depressive disorders. But do it.
Again, best of luck to you. Feelings of suicide are the pits. I just got out of the behavioral health unit after a suicide-related hospitalization, and it seems you do have a good degree of insight into your issues.
Here it’s peer support—electronic hugs, as it were. Giving those out does help distract from those bad thoughts.