Writing degree programs function as substitutes for inaccessible mental health care.

Evidence

Seen in this therapeutic light, we can understand some of the outsize growth of these programs: our culture is enduring a mental health epidemic without accessible mental (or other) health care, and, while the student debt crisis betrays that degrees are scarcely more accessible, graduating with a BFA and debt at least gives one a credential that mental health care does not; after all, there’s no CV line for completing therapy. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 143

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that creative writing degrees fill a therapy need resonates with Eva Illouz’s work on therapy culture and capital; also relevant to the reader’s broader project on mediation.