<font color="green">I don't know if this is the proper forum for this rant or not. I looked all over the PC forums but couldn't figure out exactly where it belongs. This one comes the closest. Just needing support here, and insight from others, maybe advice on how to help the situation I'm in.

I've lived in Washington (the state) for nearly a year now, and I still haven't been successful in getting plugged into psychotherapy. Part of the problem is being on disability and Medicaid. In Kentucky, where I'm from, most doctors accept Medicaid, but then they compensate for the lack of profitability by dragging treatment out over as many visits as possible. This is especially true of dentists. If you're on Medicaid, it seems they tend to treat only one tooth at a time and make you keep coming back. Here in Washington, they deal with the lack of profitability in a different way. Aside from so-called charity clinics, where the wait is endless and the eventual care is substandard, good luck finding a doctor who accepts Medicaid at all.

The local charity mental health system, BHR, has been nothing but red tape. After moving from one Washington county to another one, I have yet to receive my monthly medical card. They updated my address, but I haven't gotten it yet. It's been three months and several phone calls. And I can't see BHR without it.

I am very fortunate on two points: One, I am under the care of a nurse practitioner (several towns away; can't find more local care) who takes Medicaid, and I can get the meds I need through her. Therefore, although I am without psychotherapy, I am at least not without medication. Two, I am going to be married in the near future and will be insured through my soon-to-be husband. After that, I will qualify for actual medical care.

In an emergency, I guess I need to go through an ER. But there has been an experience a short time back that makes me tend not to trust that resource. Thinking I may need a med adjustment, and in the throes of a full-scale panic attack, I went to an ER. Of course, it being "only" a panic attack, and nothing life-or-limb-threatening, I was well down the line on the priority list. It was so crowded that after a nearly interminable wait, I was placed on a stretcher in the hallway of the ER, since they were out of rooms. I wasn't the only one in the hallway; they had stretchers lined up. Mere feet away from me was a teenage patient, and a conversation I shouldn't have even been able to hear left me disgusted. The girl admitted that she smokes because she feels stressed. Now, if the doctor had explained that the dangers outweigh any possible de-stressing effects, or that nicotine is actually a stimulant and not good as a de-stresser, I would have been content. Instead he said the most narrow-minded, demeaning, and just plain ignorant thing I think a doctor could have said. "You're 15 years old. What would you have to be stressed about?" At that point, I had been there for several hours and the edge was off the panic attack. I decided I wasn't desperately sick enough to place myself in the care of a doctor who is so out of touch with reality, he thinks teenagers never have a reason to feel stress. So I asked to be released, and was.

I guess it was a good thing I wasn't suicidal or something.</font>