Also, drugs only work in combination with talk therapy. It's amazing how many people argue for everything under the sun except talk therapy.
It's amazing how many people casually bring up the wonders of talk therapy without noting any of the confounding factors the patient must watch for while they pay out the nose for therapy that may end up having detrimental effects. An average or worse therapist for anything but textbook cases are liable to cause more harm than good.
Most Americans are scraping by with medical, addiction, or mental issues on top of being underpaid, under educated, overworked, and priced out of necessary services like mental/health/child care, housing, and transportation.
It's no wonder so many articles and studies bemoan the current state of affairs.
If anything I think part of the value of seeking out mental healthcare is symbolic. I.E. it's so difficult and costly you convince yourself that you must really want to get better, can work hard, and that something so burdensome must work or nobody would bother with it (a sort of placebo effect). Yet it's easy to get jaded and easy to find yourself going through some ineffectual therapy at great personal cost.
I also think that people are really hung-up on two specific approaches, namely talk therapy and drugs, when they can simply not be cost-effective. It's really costly to put a specialist through years of school, and heat up those counselling offices, and all of that. If you're poor enough that money can make a HUGE impact on the diet you can afford and the exercise you can get. People seem to have this funny idea that somebody living an impoverished miserable life will be happy if somebody says some kind words to them and drugs are altering their neurotransmitter levels.