The latest episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight focused on the topic of mental health, detailing all the unnecessary obstacles that can come between a mentally ill person and the care they so desperately require.

After discussing in the beginning segment the heatwave, a sun-bathing 700-kilogram (1300lb) walrus queen named Freya, and the two candidates running to replace Boris Johnson as the UK’s prime minister, John Oliver segued into the main topic by presenting how, like many other social issues, the topic of mental health and mental illness has been historically treated in an erroneous manner, to put it mildly. It is true that we have gotten much better at discussing the subject. Efforts have been made to destigmatize it in recent years, which includes a 2010 PSA in which Harrison Ford calls out the gallbladder for being useless – which Oliver thereafter counterpoints that the tiny organ actually “stores and releases bile.”

Gallbladder being useful or not aside, the point stands that “there should not be a stigma around seeking help for mental health issues”; especially now, Oliver emphasizes, when we are slowly coming out of a global pandemic that made mental health issues spike all around the globe. But even without the stigma, there are other serious barriers that come between the help and those seeking it.

last week tonight with john oliver healthcare
Image via HBO

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One of the obstacles is that there are not enough mental health care providers - one of the reasons being that they are egregiously underpaid for the high burnout work they do - which results in over half the people who need help being unable to get it. Unfortunately, dealing with poor mental health is not a matter of “sucking it up”, it is often a matter of having or not having some quality of life. When one cannot find or afford a real therapist to talk to, and it should be clear by now that it’s not easy, many people turn to apps like Cerebral, Talkspace, or Betterhelp, among others. However, Oliver also details some of the problems that can occur in these teletherapy apps, which include handing out prescriptions at a rate just slightly short of a “pill mill”.

This episode of Last Week Tonight, Episode 18 of Season 9, made it clear that mental health care is not readily available to most people who require it. It is not as affordable as it should be, insurance or not. The first challenge is to find a therapist, and that can be hard enough, but it gets even harder to find a therapist who takes one’s insurance. “Even when patients do find a provider,” the host explains “insurance companies can deny appropriate treatment, and even when they approve it, in some cases, they intervened to put an early stop to it.”

As things are, the system is not sustainable, and it’s not reaching many of those that are in dire need to be reached. At this rate, things are not getting better. The sad irony is that “we’ve gone from warehousing people with mental illness in buildings that felt like prisons to warehousing them in actual prisons instead.” Even if you hadn’t thought so before - which you probably did - after this episode you will have a better understanding of how badly the health care system is in need of revamping.

“If we want to be a society that truly respects and values mental health we have to respect and value mental health care.” Say it louder for those in the back, John!