To wonder how people afford counselling privately?

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Counselling where I live starts at £40 per hour 50 minutes with some charging £50 or £60. Concessions for unwaged are minimum £35 per hour.

The average salary where I live is £19k.

How do people afford it??

I am unsure how much benefit people get if they are not working but I'm pretty sure they are unlikely to have £35 left over a month let alone each week or fortnight.

I'm also thinking that most people who would require counselling have had life issues that has probably impacted their earning potential.

But then if the counsellors get very few clients at these rates, it would make sense that they would charge less so I am honestly confused.

Any ideas anyone??

I paid £40 a week for 6 months. It was expensive but I needed the counselling and it was an investment in my health and well being. I would have paid double for the help it has given me. It was a struggle at times but would have gone without just to make sure I could go.

I know not everyone will be able to fund private counselling but for those that need it and can just about scrape the money together I would say do it.

I think that antidepressants are overprescribed and that access to talking therapy on the NHS is woefully inadequate however I have to take issue with the idea that antidepressants work only as a placebo. The overwhelming weight of scientific research shows that they have a big role to play in treating depression. They increase the effectiveness of talking therapy in most cases of severe depression and I wouldn't want anyone to be put off taking medication they'd been prescribed without a proper discussion of the evidence base and their response to treatment with a GP or psychiatrist.

Agree with that ILovePud

If an antidepressant were no better than placebo it would not get a licence. That is not an opinion it is how drug licensing works.

Regarding accreditation, another body to mention is UKCP which accredits psychotherapists. Some are in BACP as well.

I think everyone should be entitled to a certain number of therapy sessions on the NHS, kind of like how you can have a certain number of rounds of IVF.

It is available on the NHS, but not as easily or often sa there is demand for it. I suspect the pills are cheaper than the NHS hiring and directly paying more chartered pscyhologists.

Now is the time to ask politicians about it - there is a bit of head of steam politically behind more money for mental health to improve the balance (we have had more spending on physical than mental for a long while).

Therapy should be freely available in the NHS, like other specialties such as physio etc. That it isn't widely available isn't the fault of therapists, but part of the historically general crappy treatment by governments of the mentally ill in society. Smoke for 50 years, develop COPD? Here, have loads of services. Develop mental illness through no fault of your own? Fuck you.
(That isn't an advocation for the rationing of NHS services based on personal behaviour BTW, just an example)

I don't know that COPD treatment is that lavish or great, really. I think like most common chronic conditions, the NHS is desperately trying to keep cost per patient per year low rather than thinking about the cost of treatment per patient over their lifetime.

I don't know. Lung Function clinics. Community Matron support. Pulmonary rehabilitation clinics. Respiratory Action team outreach support. Regular checks involving Spirometry with practice nurse. Oxygen equipment installation throughout the house, if needed. OT support re disability. Like I said, I'm not criticising the provision of these services, though it'd be nice to have something provided for those with MH services. I was admitted to hospital recently for something acutely physical. It was astonishing to see how well and thoroughly I was investigated and treated. The most shocking part? I was treated seriously, there were doctors popping in every couple of hours. My experience with my psychiatrist? Ten minutes every four months, treated like an afterthought. If you're not immediately suicidal right there and then, you can fuck off and look after yourself; that's better than the last consultant psychiatrist I had, who I had to complain about to PALS because she was hopeless. Well, my ex gf complained because they had left me in such a gibbering mess that I was unable to.
My therapist that I have to pay for? I won't hear a word said against her. I can text her anytime I want if I need to. She's a lifesaver.

My relative with moderate COPD gets an annual review with a nurse, and a prescription for inhalers. For his mild depression he gets a review with the doctor and a prescription for antidepressants. Both of these conditions entitle him to slightly subsidised council gym membership. More severe COPD and more severe mental health problems both get more intensive support. I would agree it's not nearly adequate, though, especially in the field of mental health.

And access to psychiatrists is a joke at the moment.

I've got pretty severe MH problems, not reactive to treatment (well, not the mad cocktail of drugs they're treated me with over the past few years). I'll be in therapy for years. If you're actively suicidal, with a plan ready and tools to hand, you MIGHT be admitted. It could be several hundred miles away though. The COPD patients that I admit regularly ( I have to be careful not to out myself here), who havent responded to first line antibiotics and/or steroids? Straight to the local general hospital.

Anyway, I digress. The therapists I've encountered (except one muppet) have been empathetic and VERY helpful.

I pay about 100 pounds per session, I go weekly, its money well spent and if I have to go for years I will.

And tts funny how every time I think Im almost finished something else comes up and that then takes more sessions to explore.

Im loving it and the changes its made in me.

Not that I pay for it myself. My estranged husband does, not that he knows what he's paying for. I have the sessions and bill him for medical expenses every month. He would never refuse to pay. I figured that as most of the sessions are about him in roundabout ways its only fair he should be paying the bill.

It doesn't half make me laugh at times.

Good for you, Weebirdie. Serves him right.

Not all physical health conditions are treated as like COPD. I feel just the same way about how I'm treated on the NHS. I have a degenerative painful condition that leaves me needing a wheelchair and care.

So some of the things I need include: Long-term physiotherapy & hydrotherapy, massage twice weekly to reduce significant muscle spasms, an electric wheelchair, various walking sticks/crutches, high doses of painkillers, counselling to cope with it all, in-put from a consultant on both my condition and pain.

Out of that list the NHS provides the painkillers,and six sessions of physiotherapy a long time ago. I had my diagnosis four years ago from the specialist consultant and one visit to the pain clinic where they told me they don't manage incurable conditions.

I had to find funding from myself or elsewhere for everything else that allows me to function in any way, including the wheelchair that most people would think would be provided.

So I would say it's similar to help for mental health problems - they might diagnose you (I.e. Do screenings for anxiety and depression) and will prescribe antidepressants. The six sessions of physio is similar to the six sessions of counselling. And they certainly don't support the mental health issues that come from having a painful condition that changes your whole life.

It's only recently that politicians have stopped proclaiming reductions in MH beds as a good thing - it always struck me as weird how reductions in psychiatric inpatient services were paraded as an achievement whereas every coronary care bed lost was a tragedy

Do you know if you're eligible for a NHS funding assessment, GlitterBelle? Do you get Direct Payments from SS? helping to sort out stuff like this is kind of my day job. PM me if you want.

OP and Ilovesooty my local college does offer counselling services to the local community at much reduced prices: www.nescot.ac.uk/talk
Maybe other colleges teaching counselling also do the same?

MinceSpy I stand corrected. That looks really interesting. All our local college students have to find their own placements in the community.

Counsellors deserve every penny they earn and probably more.

I started training back in the 90's but couldn't afford to finish. You needed to be able to work for nothing for a long time and also fund your own counselling/therapy and supervision on top. There were no loans or grants for tuition, it was a massive upfront cost (some of this may have changed since then?)

This is a dreadful shame because it means that people from a working class background are at a huge disadvantage if they want to become counsellors (a bit like unpaid internships). So counsellors are overwhelmingly middle class and so are their clients because overwhelmingly those are the people who can afford counselling.

Meanwhile if you are poor you need to be severely unwell to access anything further than GP care with ADs and, if you are lucky, 6-8 sessions of talking therapy.

NHS not only needs to fund counselling properly it also needs to fund counsellor training, just as it does with other HCPs. I'm not holding my breath.

RandomNPC there is a massive overlap between people with COPD and people with mental health conditions:

Smoking: People with a mental disorder smoke almost half of all tobacco consumed and account for almost half of all smoking-related deaths

Plenty I had to pay all my training costs up front. I already had a degree so wasn't eligible for a loan. I had to put most of it on credit cards. I think some of the people on my course were funded by partners and family and some might have had student loans.

You can get career development loans now but only for the last two years.

I must admit I was a bit envious of my fellow students who worked part time or not at all and whose study was funded by their partners. Only two of us did the course while working full-time. I took a lot of annual leave in order to complete the placement hours and I'm still proud of being one of only four who graduated in time at the end of the course. The others had to wait another six months as they hadn't done the hours.

FatCuntreduction in inpatient beds would be an achievement if they were going because they were no longer needed as a result of greatly improved early access and better community mental health teams. However in reality reductions in inpatient beds is driven by a cost saving agenda with inadequate reallocation of these resources leading to difficulties accessing beds for people in desperate need, massive expenditure on private and out of area placements and people sent hundreds of miles from their families because there's no where local for them to go. It's infuriating.