Mental Health services should be free

This will be an introduction to my argument:

Our mental health is one of the most important aspects of our well-being. While your physical health is also important, if your mental health isn't taken care of, then you will struggle to take care of the rest of your wellbeing. Many people within America alone struggle with maintaining a healthy mental wellbeing and often go untreated for any underlying issues. According to statistics, 1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year. 1 in 5 children, either currently or at some point during their life, have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. 1 in 25 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. In order to address these underlying issues, people need to have access to mental health services. If mental illness continues to go untreated for a long period of time, it can result in tragic consequences for the individuals that suffer from it, including losing their job, substance abuse, homelessness, inappropriate incarceration, and suicide, and poor quality of life. And yet, over half of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment (54.7%), totaling over 28 million Americans as of today. Mental health services are vital for supporting people as they work to recover from their mental health problems. However, they are very costly and often require the individual to either have insurance or pay out of their pocket. The average cost of psychotherapy in the U.S. ranges from $100 to $200 per session (depending on the state). Not many people are able to afford to pay the high prices for these services, leaving the individual without access to the services that they need. Additionally, with the cost for therapy and counseling being too expensive, it can add more stress to the individual that's struggling with mental illness. By making mental health services free, it will allow all of the public to have full access to the treatment and support that they need in order to recover without them having to worry about the costs.

Pro not only failed to define several key terms in the prompt, but also defined something that isn't even in the prompt, wasting the storage space of the digital description section. Tip for Pro: A winnable setup would be more optimal if the terms in the topic and only them are defined in the description.

Accepted.

Define "services"

These are the entries I have found on MW dictionary that fit the contextual environment of this topic. Feel free to add any if you label the source and justification.

Define "Free"

The topic should be:

There are no limiters, so we are assuming that the topic says, all work that could qualify as mental health services should not be paid by anyone using anything.

When we say something is free in casual terms, we usually mean they are free to "us", the consumers. Unless the corporation was purposefully non-profit just to prove me wrong, which I will get to in a moment, nobody in the baseball industry would think their net income increased when a group of people turned in their "free baseball ticket" from the lottery, one form or another. We usually say something is free if we don't have to pay for it. WE don't have to pay for it.

However, this is a debate, and using vernacular English debate topics will only get more confusing as different specimens of implicature makes the semantical environment deep. I wish to have nothing to do with those. We use a dictionary that collects what the authentic meaning of a word is, which is Merriam-Webster.

If a commodity is free to certain consumers, it usually means that another party pays for its worth that is not zero. For example, if you enjoy a free meal along with your boss at a classy dine, it probably means the boss pays for both individuals' meals. And yes, actual quality of "free" can be denied even if no financial exchange, not cash nor loanable fund, was made. If you and your boss leaves without paying, the restaurant pays for the meal because they have output the value of labor equal to that the price of the meal made, even if they didn't get anything material from it. And if the police knocks on your door and chases you to the jailhouse at the same time supplying the diner with the supposed amount of cash, in the end, you are still paying for it. It does not cost nothing unless the economy ceases to function due to there being a lack of functional currency.

The idea is if something has value, it is not free, someone somewhere is paying for it. Since what group of people mental health services should be free to was not specified in the preset, this means based on the bounds(or a lack thereof), Pro is correct if and only if:

The second one is obviously wrong as we have used currency to trade for stuff like gold and ice cream for decades if not centuries, even if they are just a more stiff variation of toilet paper and some numbers on a computer. We use those. We actually do.

The first one was openly dismissed by Pro, as Pro admits mental health services do have value.

I do not have to cite the entire paragraph.

I rest my case.

Ex10nd

Keep 'em extending.

It is the last round and I should be able to declare victory here.