Episode 2 Transcript: Affordable Mental Health Care Life Hacks (Low income or No Insurance)
Good morning y buenos dias! To my lovely friends all over the world welcome to the Noggin Podcast, a cozy mental health advocacy podcast with me, Kyarra Keele. It genuinely means so much to me that you’re here.
On this podcast we provide a safe, loving space advocating for diverse mental health dialogue in the community for people of color, educating about marginalized mental illnesses, and providing resources for mental health recovery. If that's what you’re looking for, welcome home!
If you’ve already listened to me introduce myself briefly in a different episode, you can skip ahead 40 seconds. But if you’ve never stumbled across me before, again I’m Kyarra Keele. I’m a 4-time published author, healthy lifestyle blogger of 6 years, and an aspiring polyglot currently learning 4 languages, which are Spanish, and American Sign Language and I’m also rather slowly learning French and Arabic. I’m a mental health ambassador working as a liaison between the community and my local health center to educate, support, and progress the mental health dialogue. I’ve been navigating the mental health system for about a decade now and I’m extremely passionate about mental health service and advocacy because I believe that no one deserves to be hurting or feeling alone in this universe. I hope this podcast will cheer you along on your good days and offer a cozy and supportive haven for you on your more difficult days.
As with all of my podcast episodes, this creation comes to you after extensive research to help make your life a little easier. These are all things that I learned the hard way, through some trial and tribulation so I’m hoping this information will be of great use to you or someone you love. Definitely listen until the very end because I’ve included some pretty important money and time-saving tips throughout this episode.
Okay so, let me start off by saying that I deeply understand from my own experience how taxing and tiring it can be to look for mental health treatment especially if you come from a low-income family or you’re going through a financially difficult situation. If you’re not the primary payer of the copays and bills you may worry about being a burden to whoever is paying the bills for the mental health treatment or you may be telling yourself that without financial support, there’s no way that you can afford treatment. I denied myself the proper treatment for years because I was worried about the financial element and just didn’t think it was possible for my parents to afford counseling but all these years later, my toolbox is full of tools that I strongly believe can move you at least one leap closer to accessing the help you need and deserve.
Before we go any further, it’s time for our Noggin Nurturing Segment, where we take a quick break from the episode to do one thing to nurture and invest in ourselves! As I always say, as a plant collector, I’ve learned that much like plants, our minds need gentle encouragement. So, For example, you might use this pause to motivate yourself to hop out of bed, make yourself a warm cup of tea, take a relaxing shower, do some gentle stretching...You could make a phone call to someone you love, or make that brave call to make your first or next counseling appointment, journal, make your to-do list for the day, or plan out a healthy breakfast. You could take a short 5 or 10-minute walk or if you’re on medication, you can use this time to take your meds.
If you’re in the car or bus commuting you could try listening to a song that makes you feel uplifted or planning out your day ideal mentally. If you can’t try any of those examples for the segment, you can still participate! I’d like you to make a pledge to yourself of what you’ll do to nurture yourself as soon finish your commute journey. I truly do understand that sometimes even the most simple tasks can feel like they take all of your energy, so please pick a task that’s gentle and kind to your body and mind. For myself, today I’ll spend the segment by setting a timer for 10 minutes and organizing my living space the best I can within that period of time. This method is always effective to help me accomplish tasks that I find taxing, and organizing my live space always boosts my mood and clears my mind. If you’ve never read the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, I highly recommend this book to you! It’s an easy read and genuinely so helpful for those looking to radically tidy and clear their living spaces or even embark on a minimalist journey. I read it several years ago and it did impact my life and my minimalist perspective significantly as so many other readers say. It helped me establish the connection between physical and emotional clutter that affected my mental health..and if you’re interested in an episode about how minimalism has been a wonderful tool for improving my mental health, comment below to share with me. Also, comment below to share with me and everyone in our home how you’ll spend the break for the Noggin Nurturing segment…
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Welcome back and bienvenidos! Okay, my first tips for finding affordable mental health care apply especially to college or high school students, so if you’re not a student anymore and you’re not listening in order to help someone who is a student you’re welcome to skip ahead 2 minutes since I value your time and want all of you to gain from the tips that are most relevant to you.
Okay, if you are a student looking to gain more information about affordable mental health resources available to you, I highly recommend that you make an appointment with your college or highschool’s caseworker or counselor, if you don’t have a caseworker at your school. If you’re not too familiar with what a caseworker is, they are essentially a type of social worker who is employed by a government agency, non-profit organization, or other group to take on the cases of individuals and provide them with advocacy, information or other services.
If you’re not sure if your school has a caseworker or counselor that could help with finding mental health treatment, you could call your student health center or the main office of the school to ask. If you collaborate with your caseworker or school counselor and explain to them your situation, they can help you with finding an affordable therapist and psychiatrist, finding which therapists are covered by your insurance, selecting services with copays in your budget range, helping you find inpatient or intensive outpatient hospitalization programs, or affordable support groups on or off campus. Moreover, they often know the best clinics and hospitals in the area to seek treatment depending on your needs. Your caseworker can often assist you in making phone calls or drafting emails to different providers and your insurance network if you have questions or concerns but feel too overwhelmed or anxious to make all of the calls and connections by yourself. They can also help give you the tools to aid you in your solo at home research for mental health resources such as a website that my caseworker introduced me to called Psychology Today which is an extensive directory of mental health professionals that you can browse through based on filters you can adjust such as your insurance type, type of therapy, age range, online therapy and more. All in all, reaching out to your on-campus caseworker or counselor can be a major leap in the right direction. I certainly wish I had known that my campus had a caseworker my first few years of university.
My next major tip for students is that you simply ask your caseworker, counselor, or staff at your health center about the possibility of getting a fee waiver or reduction for on campus counseling sessions if your school has therapists on site. Many colleges offer the first few therapy sessions with on-campus counselors for free and the next few at a rather affordable cost but if that price is still a burden on you financially, I would ask to see if you qualify for a waiver.
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Now for tips that apply more generally to anyone and not just students, especially if you have insurance that doesn’t have great coverage or no insurance at all. I highly recommend that you look into trying a training psychology clinic. To find one in your area, simple hop onto trusty Google, type in your city next to “psychology training clinic”and see what comes up. For example, the Gronowski Clinic in Palo Alto California at Stanford University is a psychology training clinic that provides counseling sessions on a sliding scale based on income for as low as $5 and they are dedicated to providing compassionate counseling and psychotherapy services to adults, older adults, couples, adolescents, children, and families.
Additionally, your local YMCA or the “Y” as some call it can be a wonderful resource to look into for therapy services. Simply type in YMCA into Google for your city to see if locations in area city offer free, reduced cost or sliding scale counseling services. For example, many of the YMCA’s in the Bay Area offer therapy services for individuals, families, children/youth for sliding scale prices. I was surprised to learn this but I did verify this as true. If you don’t have insurance at all trying googling community health centers in your city that have sliding scale prices based on your income and also check the websites of your local hospitals which often have hospitals have free support groups. For example, my local hospital has weekly, free Depression Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) support groups, Alcoholics Anonymous groups, Alzheimer's and Seizures support groups, Cancer, Refuge recovery, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous groups and so much more.
Although many of us associate hospitals with expensive bills, you’d be surprised how many affordable or completely free resources are actually available.If you can’t find a training clinic, community health center or YMCA that offers affordable therapy or psychiatric services or at least referrals, I recommend that you, as mentioned above in the student section of this episode, try using the website called Psychology Today which again is an extensive list of mental health professionals that you can browse through based on filters you can adjust such as your insurance type, age and more. It will take time and patience to find the right person, so just a heads up.
If you have anyone who can help you leave voicemails inquiring about insurance coverage or any other questions you have for the therapist or psychiatrist, I recommend that you split up the work and collaborate to find someone faster as the process can be lengthy. And a quick pro tip: If you find a therapist or psychiatrist who you like and have contacted but then find out that they do not accept your insurance or are out of your budget, I recommend that you make the most of the situation by asking them for a referral to someone else that they may know that is in your insurance network or budget. And if all else fails, perhaps you can do what I did, which was to find affordable online therapy services...if you’re interested in hearing about how I saved a lot of time, money, and energy switching to online therapy, be sure to comment below and let me know and I’ll see what I can do for the next episode.
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For my much-loved hard of hearing and deaf community, transcripts in English are now available on the new Noggin Podcast website, and for my Latinx community transcripts in español will be coming very soon on the website for you all as well.
If you made it here to the conclusion of this episode, I’d like to say thank you so much. Muchisimas gracias. If you’re interested in learning more information about The Noggin Podcast you can visit our website and subscribe to be a part of our cozy home with new episode releases every other Monday morning. See you in the next episode! Nos vemos en el próximo episodio.