How do psychotherapists respond to that?
A. It would be nice if you could cure cancer in a couple of sessions, but some things do take time. The insurance companies say they offer comprehensive mental health coverage, but they come up with ways of discouraging psychotherapy to save money in the short run. You can make a good argument, though, that it [psychotherapy] reduces costs in the long run. There’s evidence that it reduces the number of sick days in workers, and it has numerous preventive functions. When insurance won’t pay for long-term out-patient treatment of people with significant mental problems, those people tend to become “revolving-door patients” who get hospitalized in crisis, discharged, and rehospitalized during the next crisis. Hospital care costs geometrically more than outpatient care, so now, by denying people care when they’re not in total disorder, we may be increasing the number of people bouncing in and out of the hospital. One thing we’re trying to do in the PDM is represent a broader, more European
