Courtney Balcombe

News Editor

clb6264@psu.edu

I’ve struggled with mental health problems since I was 12-years-old, and I’ve seen a therapist every year on a weekly, monthly, and whenever I needed to talk to them basis until COVID started.

Back in March, COVID caused my therapist’s office to shut down and I had to call a number to talk to someone who didn’t know me or know anything about my mental health. This went on for almost two months before I was able to finally set up an actual appointment with my therapist.

At first, it didn’t seem so bad because I could finally see my therapist. They informed me it would be on Zoom and I didn’t mind at all.

I had met with her at the end of May for an hour. However, a few weeks later I received a letter in the mail informing me that my therapist would no longer be at that office after this December and their office had no openings for another therapist to take me.

Reading that news in a letter was kind of tough, so I called to try and set up an appointment. There never seems to be a receptionist in the office, except for maybe once a week. Back in June, maybe July, I called to set up another Zoom meeting with no callback to finish setting it up.

Since I couldn’t get a hold of someone in the office, I called the number to talk to a random person again. Having someone to talk to and discuss my problems with worked for a while, but it wasn’t the same as having my therapist provide actual help for me during the phone call.

Now it’s November and I still haven’t heard from the office. I call every once in a while, usually once a week, to try to set up a meeting with her. The only good thing is that I have an app to refill my meds out to the end of the year.

Unfortunately, I only have a month left to meet with her. It’s upsetting to lose her as my therapist because she helped me get my Emotional Support Animal, ESA, during my sophomore year of college when I was really struggling with my mental health.

Even calling my insurance to find a new therapist is difficult because most places are not taking new patients. Some won’t because they require in-person meetings to meet and get to know, and sometimes interview, their new patient.

However, hopefully, I’ll get to see my therapist one more time before she leaves that office. Maybe she’ll even help me find someone to take me as their patient until COVID is over. If I had someone to talk to during COVID that actually knew about my problems and knew me as a person the way she does, quarantine would have gone smoother for my mental state.