If John Oliver is doing a piece about something, you know there’s probably going to be something deeply wrong with it — and sure enough, in the last episode of Last Week Tonight, U.S. mental health care proves to be no exception.
Oliver starts by laying out the scale of the problem, explaining that “about four in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety of depressive disorder” during the pandemic, and that “more than half the people who need mental health care do not receive it, with that rate being even higher for minority populations.”
Oliver spends the next 20 minutes breaking down some of the many mental health care issues, from troubling responses from mental health apps to insurance company denials and the large number of therapists leaving the profession.
“In the past, so much of the problem here was that people would not ask for help, and thankfully that’s now less of an issue,” Oliver concludes. “But now when people do reach out for help we’re just not in a position to give it to them.
“If we want to be a society that truly respects and values mental health, we have to respect and value mental health care — and that means supporting the people who deliver it.”
