There’s a cost-effective and practical way to improve mental health care, and that’s by shortening the time it takes to become a psychiatrist, psychologist, or psychotherapist and letting them do more to treat mental illness.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any standards whatsoever. The mentally ill are a vulnerable population, and there should be barriers to protect them from incompetent or malevolent actors. But the current situation doesn’t make sense.
The United States is experiencing a psychiatrist shortage, with patients in rural areas and poorer urban settings most lacking access. While the conversation around addressing this shortage has mainly focused on how to persuade medical students to enter psychiatry, we should be discussing whether it makes sense for would-be psychiatrists to go through 12 years of education and training in the first place. Clinical psychologists are also in short supply, with 56% no longer taking new patients. It takes between 9 and 12 years to become one.
The lengthy path to completing these advanced degrees is a historical accident more than anything else. Psychiatry originated within the field of medicine, which is why psychiatrists must study to be physicians even though they end up treating mental illnesses. After World War II, there was a shortage of psychiatrists to care for returning soldiers with mental health problems, so psychology PhDs were permitted to step in and provide treatment, birthing the field of clinical psychology.