May 25, 2026 · 5 min read
The counsellor who holds everyone in her head
Dutch mental health care held 101,134 waiting spots in October 2025, with the average wait at 24 weeks, and the counsellors already inside carry the overflow. Working memory holds three to five things at once, while a full caseload is twenty or thirty people, each with a history to reload before the hour starts. The cost is not only the counsellor's exhaustion. In one study, patients of burned-out therapists reached meaningful improvement 28.3% of the time against 36.8% for the rest, 37% lower odds. The load is invisible, and it reaches the chair across the desk.