not having enough therapists or having too many people who seek them
Neither actually. The health insurances are allowed to decide amongst themselves how many therapists are covered. And this number hasn’t been adjusted (much) since 1999 even though demand has skyrocketed since then.
Approximately 50% of therapists in Germany cannot accept public health insurance. Yet there is enough demand from the 10% of Germans with private health insurance ( + those who pay for therapy thenselves) to keep those therapists afloat.
In other words:
12.5% of Germans have been diagnosed with depression => 9.5 million people officially diagnosed which is certainly an underreported figure.
There are ~24,000 therapists in Germany.
As a result, there are 396 people with depression per therapist - meaning if every therapist worked 40 hours per week with 1 hour per client you’d have to wait 10 weeks between sessions.
Now add all other mental illnesses which would require therapy and you’d get an even larger number.
Sure, not everyone diagnosed with depression requires therapy. But this doesn’t excuse the obvious lack of paid therapists - which is openly acknowledged by the public health insurances but they are not legally required to change anything.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 weeks ago
I think it's a general issue with our healthcare system. And the lack of doctors and hospitals is more pronounced in rural areas. But basically the same thing applies in the city. And not just for mental therapy. You often also get to wait for a MRT, if there's something wrong with your foot... I'm not an expert on this. But I guess we could do way better. And I hear that a lot, that someone had to wait for therapy for relatively normal physical issues. And similar things apply to related professions. One home for the elderly next door, just closed a year ago. Not because we don't have elderly people anymore or anything, there is quite some demand. But they just didn't have enough employees to do the work.