This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

セラピスト (another loanword) and 精神病医, which would appear to be the search term I needed

my lack of familiarity with the latter term leaves me unsure though, where services range from counselling to a psychiatrist who could prescribe me stuff (and how much of an asshole they're going to be at the latter end). My lack of familiarity with mental health services in general (let alone in a notoriously bad country for it whose language I have considerable gaps in) leaves me anxious about talking to experts at all about this.

My experience with mental health professionals to date has been "acknowledge I'm in enough of a rut to work up the courage to make an appointment, go, be stressed out, possibly experience mild catharsis, fail to make subsequent appointments without external pressure to do so, let the issue slide until shit gets bad again, go somewhere completely different"

Edit @Plaid: yeah tbh I should do that instead of browsing around on assorted likely-out-of-date websites. I just... feel unsafe (paranoid, possibly) doing so in a small town, which is why I'm not confident asking my supervisor at work either.

I seriously needed a baseline for what mental health services are like before coming here (my experience really does consist exclusively of first-time visits).

Oh hahaha also there are indubitably no good places in my town so the nearest decent-sized city is forty minutes away. The prefectural capital is going to be an hour to most prospective places, so weekdays are out and not every place is open Saturdays (and in those cases, usually the mornings only).

E:E: This place looks worth an investigation, later, maybe