Why are there no mental health services in Eugene? I am a recovering alcoholic with depression and Asperger’s syndrome, and I can’t find a therapist in this town to save my life.

I’m on a waiting list with Chrysalis Behavioral Health Outpatient Services, who have told me that the waiting list is a month long, and if I don’t answer the phone when they call me, they’ll just go to the next person on the list. Am I just supposed to sit by my phone for a month and hope I don’t miss the call? 

No, so I have been looking for someone who can help me sooner on Pacific Source’s official website hoping to get help sooner. However, even when I find someone my insurance will pay for, they don’t pick up the phone. I sit there listening to a robot talk for 10 minutes, only to be sent to an answering machine telling me to leave a voicemail and wait for a call back, or that they’re not accepting new patients and to leave a message if I want to join their waitlist. 

We have a mental health care crisis in this country and it feels like the people who are supposed to help us don’t care. 

Doctors are not heroes, they are not public servants, they are capitalist and all they care about is making money and if they can’t make money off you, they don’t care if you live or die. 

Jack Deyo

Eugene

Editor’s note: At the writer’s request, we have allowed the use of a pseudonym to protect his medical privacy.

Comments are closed.