There's nothing that sells better than a dream. Just look at Anthony Robbins ridiculous wealth made on the selling of hope alone, or that priest that tells people they should send him money because a higher power wants him to have a 65 million dollar private jet. We're conditioned from a young age to invest in dreams that are not even our own, that exist in the collective consciousness, like the American Dream: ever elusive, and imbued with all our hope (and sometimes, all our money).

Honestly, is there a product we know less about when purchasing it, of which we have less ability to assess usefulness, than what a psych professional is thought to be able to provide? At least with a medical doctor there is some possibility of knowing their success rate, by being able to look up if they have had malpractice lawsuits, or by them actually losing their licenses in worst case scenarios. There are no such comparable failsafes in the psych industry, or at least it's highly unlikely that psychologically injured individuals will have it in them to go through the process of suing for anything like malpractice especially with the less likely possibility of closure that's involved. In the world of business, conversely, there are metrics sometimes at every turn: every success and failure is measured, with project teams conducting post mortem examinations where plans are made to incorporate what was learned from every success and every mistake into next projects. I'm not suggesting this could be entirely recreated in the psych industry, but it would be nice if it wasn't nearly its polar opposite.

In lieu of mental health industries imposing any serious metrics to measure their outcomes, we need to be educated and watchful consumers on behalf of ourselves and our communities. We need far more advocacy. I'm glad we can accomplish at least some piece of that here, advocating for one another's best possible outcomes.