Once payment enters the story opportunists and exploitation enters the chat too.
Since you bring up sprituality and its disconnection from science based mental health care, its worth checking out Canadian Philosopher Charles Taylors classic work The Secular Age. Or ask your fav GPT about it. It shows us one of the reasons Religion survived across all cultures and the rise and fall of kings and empires, is because when people suffer what the mind really needs is a way to shift focus away from suffering. Thats the least that can be done. And it was traditionally done by religious systems via rituals, stories, music, dance, art, service etc. It was a way to get the entire community involved in Care.
It turns out that it's quite helpful to be able to afford the cost of room & board, food, and utilities as part of being a helpful companion to others. The fellow I spoke with said the pay wasn't much, so like teachers, most of the people who take these important benevolent jobs aren't doing it for the money. If they were in it for the money they'd be working for Facebook.
