What happens to people who might have been helped by having psychotherapy but for whatever reason did not get any during their lifetime?

As a rule, therapy or not, they die.

People who could benefit from psychotherapy but never get it continue to struggle with their various difficulties. Some achieve peace while some are always haunted.

My first thought was that they don’t reach their potential.

Even if you don’t have any ‘issues’, therapy is good for you. It gives you a sounding board without judgment, which is pretty impossible for a mate to do, often even for friends. Bounce ideas off of, run over the pros and cons of a situation, hell…you can just vent if you want. It really helps to get things out so you’re not obsessing over them.

I’m sure there are many who might disagree with me, but I don’t think the world is better off for having the last generation or two going to psychotherapy.

All psychological issues, eventually go away…~

That is me, and countless of people in my country. Psychotherapy isn’t a concept here. Sure, there are “therapists” and “psychiatrists” here, but they mostly work on extreme cases and people think they are only good with those cases. If you aren’t visibly insane, there is no reason you need a doctor. Besides, our knowledge of psychology is so horrible most things consider basic by everyone else is a mystery to many people here. Not to mention the price.

How do I turn out?

@Mimishu1995 You are amazing! <3 <3< 3

Psychotherapy often does not help people who do get it. Sometimes the wounds are just too deep or they simply can’t find a good therapist and end up with ineffective therapy.

Its part of the broken medical system in the US, so thet continue to suffer in many cases. I went and was charged $400 for one very unhelpful session, at the time of service having full insurance benefits.
In other cases there can be free groups, peer counseling, etc…
For me, I studied the subject which helped me tremendously.

@KNOWITALL “I went and was charged $400 for one very unhelpful session”

That’s been my experience every time I attempted to see a therapist. Good ones must be few and far between. They showed little interest in doing anything useful except for getting you to come to another appointment and charging a small fortune. Therapists have to be incredibly intelligent to get through complex things and I feel like a lot of them know they just can’t be of any help. They’re just not equipped but they have bills to pay like the rest of us. A lot of them may not have even sorted out their own issues. In the end, I had to go the DIY route. (It was just too much work stress and I found a new job)

For the naysayers. My experience says you’re wrong. I’m not going to debate you, but I’m not going to let you malign a very helpful profession without a comment.

I have some mental health diagnoses given to me by competent psychiatrists. All of them have urged me to seek therapy from psychologists and others in order to process the trauma that contributed to the illnesses and make them more difficult to treat by medicine alone. The psychiatrists have all acknowledged the value of good therapy.

I started going to therapy when I was 23 years old. I have never once paid full price for a session. It’s always covered by insurance. Always. I pay only the copay. Psychology Today has a psychologist-finder feature that will match a therapist to your needs and insurance.

One session with a therapist will do very little. A therapist is not a physician who understands your symptoms and gives you medicine. Therapy requires multiple visits over weeks, months, and in cases like mine, years.

The most important thing to know is that a therapist will not diagnose you to your face and give you the answer. Over the course of several sessions, they will guide you to uncover your own difficulties and then gently guide you toward the appropriate remedies. A therapist is a guide leading you to wellness.

I do not feel like listing all my ailments that therapy helped me overcome. I will give one bit of important information, and you will have to use your intelligence to flesh out the ramifications of that:

I was very ill. I was so ill that I was placed on SSDI disability with my first application, a program that is extremely difficult to get in to. I was unable to work for 8 years. I have greatly recovered with the help of good psychiatrists, excellent therapists, helpful case managers, and my own self. I could not have done it alone.

@Hawaii_Jake I suspect your issues were ones they were equipped to handle, you had good therapists and you had a proper diagnosis. I tried six different therapists, four of them I attended more than five sessions. One I saw for months. They were useless in helping me identify what was the issue. Insurance never covered any of it. I’m not against therapy, I’m saying you have to be careful.

I was guessing that maybe not all insurance policies covered psychotherapy, from the comments here about people not having coverage for it. I just googled it and i found that some policies cover it and some only cover it if it’s found to be medically necessary.

I worked in local government and we had a premium policy, which i retain as a retiree. Our policy covered 10 sessions with a copay and after that, the therapist had to justify more sessions and I think the copay went up. During the pandemic, the governor made all copays in the state $5. That ended recently. I suspect that many providers and patients never knew about that generous benefit.

I am afraid that without proper therapy and social supports that people might end up in jail or homeless.

I would have been dead in my 20s.

@RedDeerGuy1 They do.

@canidmajor me too