Weighing in for Southern European mental health care, family support and abuse support. Believe me, you will be better off talking to friends or fellow sufferers online or offline than trying your luck in the public system. Pills is all you get here, and prescribed somewhat hit-or-miss after what amounts to a 15 min interview, most of which are spent by the doctor typing your data into his computer.

If you need help for domestic abuse, be prepared for hours of bureaucracy while reliving and retelling your trauma to a host of police and social security professionals repeatedly. Then relocated to somewhere where you receive the bare minimum of care. I was lucky to never need it but have witnessed it, and frankly would consider any offers from unknown van-dwellers before this.

The only way to get the help you need is to research your stuff well beforehand, and then wheedle out of the system what you need by annoying the bureaucrats till they give up.

Maybe some non-Europeans could weigh in with their perspective as well.

Yeah... Americans have very expensive, fairly low quality healthcare compared to much of the rest of the developed world... and we also have garbage quality public education compared to much of the developed world.

If you are an average, poor, barely educated American kid from an abusive family, chances are you do not even realize that people from other countries use the internet as well.

The 'joke' during the Bush years was that Americans learn geography through our wars.

This isnt a joke anymore. Our education systems are worse today, in general, than when I was a kid... Most American kids are basically unaware of the rest of the world, other than a few famous landmarks from a movie or music video.

I met an 18 year old a few months ago who was an otherwise capable and reasonable person... but I had to explain to him that the Iron Man movies were not documentaries.

He actually thought they were at least based on real life events, genuinely.

And he was actually fleeing an abusive family.

In America these days, schools are terrible, Parents are usually very overworked, very stressed out, come home from work and either go to bed, or zone out with TV, Video Games or Booze or Drugs.

They rarely spend quality time with their kids, as the average American worker is far worse off in many respects than many other parts of the developed world.

But uh anyway... yeah Americans usually just assume by default that everyone on the internet speaking english is also American, at least via text, myself included usually, unless some particular non American vernacular or cultural reference is used or whatever.

Usually when you tell the average American that basically most Europeans and many Asians and Africans are just also taught English in addition to their mother tongues during standard childhood education, they do not even believe you, or are astounded by this fact. (Exception to this is; Unless they are from a recently immigrated family.)

I am not quite sure what you mean, or if I am understanding what you are saying near the end of your comment though.

Are... poor, abused, poorly educated American children somehow going to be able to access quality mental healthcare from outside their country? How would they pay for it? How would they travel to it?

Or do you more mean that basically people should use like country flags on such discussion groups so that people at least generally know what country their given advice should apply to?

Amazing Voyager episode. Those uniforms...