I'm a clinical psychologist in the US, and it is a complete total shitshow, a combination of stigma and bigotry from outside the system, and self-inflicted nonsense from within.
People misunderstand and have trouble thinking of mental health to begin with, so you end up with general attitudes of "people just have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or "just get over it," not understanding that the problem is often that people lack that ability. Other times it's just sheer lack of empathy for people who have had to deal with more difficult circumstances (or even just different circumstances). And then there's the recurring idea that behavioral sciences should just be like all the other sciences, or that it's not worth paying attention to because we don't have it all figured out like basic Newtonian physics.
On the other side, within the field it's a mess too. There should be many more professional models, for example, and a lot more to offer, but territorial battles screw it over for everyone. Psychologists, for example, shoot themselves in the foot with bullshit licensing requirements for reasons I don't understand (maybe to appear more rigorous? to keep competition from entering the field?), requirements that are even more stringent than for MDs in certain ways. There's also no reason psychologists shouldn't be able to learn to prescribe--many people enter clinical doctoral programs with as much natural sciences as premeds, and leave having all sorts of neuro-genetic-chemical-physiology coursework and research experience, often more than MDs in the area of neurobehavioral sciences per se. But psychiatrists bristle at the competition, and certain segments of psychologists want to control the field with their romanticized idea of what psychology "should be," again, for reasons I don't understand.
On top of that, there's various trends in treatment that have led to screwing clients over, to put it bluntly. I can't tell you the number of times I hear colleagues (not all, but a sold number) argue that treatment should be limited for its own sake, to prevent dependency or to encourage change. Sometimes that's true, but you wouldn't say that a cancer patient in need of treatment should have their treatment stopped just to teach them a lesson. And drugs are great for some people, but not for others, and in general, the administration of those drugs has become divorced from any kind of real monitoring of peoples' situations. Add to that the fact that many people's problems derive from the collapse of societal safety nets, which also means lack of funding for mental health services, and, well, you get the point.
To be fair to universities, at the same time that happened, states have been decreasing funding. Also, topheavy administration is everywhere, not just education, part of the unnecessary MBA-ification of everything. And there would be no demand for loans if corporations weren't trying to offload all their employee financial responsibilities in every way possible: just as companies are reclassifying everyone as consultants and freelancers, and decreasing everything to part-time, they stopped seeing themselves as providing career training to anyone, expecting people to do that themselves at universities and through unpaid internships.
So I wouldn't blame much on US backed government loans. The US government could offer free loans for people wanting to get Justin Bieber tattoos, and it would increase tattooing I'm sure, but wouldn't cause a generational economic crisis.
People misunderstand and have trouble thinking of mental health to begin with, so you end up with general attitudes of "people just have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or "just get over it," not understanding that the problem is often that people lack that ability. Other times it's just sheer lack of empathy for people who have had to deal with more difficult circumstances (or even just different circumstances). And then there's the recurring idea that behavioral sciences should just be like all the other sciences, or that it's not worth paying attention to because we don't have it all figured out like basic Newtonian physics.
On the other side, within the field it's a mess too. There should be many more professional models, for example, and a lot more to offer, but territorial battles screw it over for everyone. Psychologists, for example, shoot themselves in the foot with bullshit licensing requirements for reasons I don't understand (maybe to appear more rigorous? to keep competition from entering the field?), requirements that are even more stringent than for MDs in certain ways. There's also no reason psychologists shouldn't be able to learn to prescribe--many people enter clinical doctoral programs with as much natural sciences as premeds, and leave having all sorts of neuro-genetic-chemical-physiology coursework and research experience, often more than MDs in the area of neurobehavioral sciences per se. But psychiatrists bristle at the competition, and certain segments of psychologists want to control the field with their romanticized idea of what psychology "should be," again, for reasons I don't understand.
On top of that, there's various trends in treatment that have led to screwing clients over, to put it bluntly. I can't tell you the number of times I hear colleagues (not all, but a sold number) argue that treatment should be limited for its own sake, to prevent dependency or to encourage change. Sometimes that's true, but you wouldn't say that a cancer patient in need of treatment should have their treatment stopped just to teach them a lesson. And drugs are great for some people, but not for others, and in general, the administration of those drugs has become divorced from any kind of real monitoring of peoples' situations. Add to that the fact that many people's problems derive from the collapse of societal safety nets, which also means lack of funding for mental health services, and, well, you get the point.