My Wife Specializes in OCD.
Insurance covers almost nothing in the mental health world.
Our insurance, in particular, will only pay a premium (meaning, the actual fee) if a doctor is “in network.” But the doctors that are “in network” are usually booked for months in advance, since so very few therapists take insurance.
“In network,” only three therapists in our area specialize in the treatment of OCD. And only one of those three returned my calls – so he was our first choice. (And he’s in another county.)
Our in-network therapist sometimes seems like he’s reading instructions to us from a book. Shane’s doing fine, and therapy is helping, but I often wonder if Shane isn’t the therapist’s first-ever OCD patient.
So when he recommended that we try medication for Shane, we decided to give up on insurance and just find Shane some help.
I scoured the internet and made a list, mostly from Psychology Today online. And then I started calling psychiatrists, emailing psychiatrists, filling out online forms, and the like.
One group of psychiatrists told me that there was a three-month wait just to get an initial appointment. Another told me that I had to fill out a half dozen lengthy forms (which I did) before I could make an appointment.
Then I waited.
Some psychiatrists never even called back. Others called back only to tell me that they weren’t accepting new patients. And one called me to say that she had two available time slots – right in the middle of the school day – and that there was a two-month wait to get an appointment in the afternoon.
But I did get a call back from a psychiatrist who did things the old-fashioned way. He used his phone, and talked to me like a person. He seemed genuinely concerned that Shane get the help he needs, and he was able to see him right away.
“My wife specializes in OCD,” he told me. “She could do the assessment.”
I looked up the wife online, and sure enough – she only saw patients with OCD. She’d been seeing them for decades! We made an appointment for the very next day.
Yay! I thought. Finally! We can get a specialist and a prescription!
We paid $350 to sit across from an ancient woman who couldn’t really hear anything Shane said. The room – in the back of her house – was covered in antiques and military wall hangings that hadn’t been dusted since the dawn of time.
Fortunately, I witnessed the entire meeting, and knew that she wasn’t going to be a good fit for Shane. But I still needed that medication.
The OCD “specialist” finished his sentences, assuming he was saying things he wasn’t even saying. She guessed, based on what other OCD patients told her, and ended up “hearing” things that simply weren’t true. And then she told me he had “excessive” OCD and that he should be on medication as soon as possible.
“Okay,” I said, succumbing to her worldly wisdom. “Can you write us a prescription for something we can try?”
“Well my husband is the one who writes the prescriptions,” she said. “You’ll have to make an appointment with him next.”
“But we called him first,” I said. “Do we have to pay him, too?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “You will see me for the therapy and him for the medication.”
At $350 a pop, this was out of the question. So we just flushed that first $350 down the toilet, and started looking for someone quick and easy – and hopefully “in network” to write a prescription.
The search has not been easy.