Drunksunflower and myself -

Drunksunflower - first of all CONGRATZ on getting your doctorate!! AWESOME! As one who is a HUGE advocate on education I am so excited for you!

Thank you also for this post! Lots of good thoughts, ideas there. Just this morning I started feeling anxious and a bit sorry for myself, then remembered that I had promised myself to do at least ~one~ thing everyday. So I took the sheets off my bed and put them in the washer. Just doing that gave me other thoughts about what I would like to do today.

So, sometimes just taking that one small step helps! (I'm preaching to myself here! )

myself: I totally agree and underscore your information! Having worked for a hospital psychiatric crisis line and another time for Hospice, I can say from personal experience there are MULTITUDES of free to low-cost options for physical and mental health. As you said, however, the challenge is to open the phonebook or call a crisis line. When I worked the crisis line we had a HUGE book of referral sources and as a mental health counselor intern, I have another similar book sitting on my shelf right now.

I *will* say though that sometimes there is a "middleground" in this country that often gets overlooked. This is the group that has a job but no insurance for whatever reason, but they make "too much" money to qualify for the Medicaid-type programs. That's generally where the sliding scales come into play (I've used those myself).

Bravo to both posts - some excellent info here!