The problem with "psychics" is ultimately a more general problem about access to help, especially the field of psychological help. The help anyone could do is

The problem with "psychics" is ultimately a more general problem about access to help, especially the field of psychological help. The help anyone could do is entirely dependent on the ability of the person to get access to the help. For example, suppose that person A has problem C. Person B has solution D. Now, even if solution D is the perfect solution, one must figure out the access path to that solution. In this case, the problem is how to create a process whereby person A is most likely to get to the appropriate solution. My guess is that for the most part people will prioritize a) trust in the solution provider b) ease of access and c) cost, not necessarily in that order. There probably is some bias towards an easy solution (e.g. take this pill) as opposed to a complex solution (e.g. get a B.S. in computer science). It could be that a phone psychic, simply by being immediately available and inexpensive, could provide a better throughput of low level psychological issues than the higher barrier to entry of the traditional psychiatric industry. The fact that someone self-describes as a "psychic" is in some ways just another form of marketing, one with a certain target demographic. Admittedly, this demographic might hypothetically be better served by a different set of solution providers (in the same ways that the demographic most keen on faith healers might be better served by licensed physicians), but it's not clear that they would go to them for all of the reasons mentioned above. All in all, this is one of these areas that is extremely difficult to judge, both because of the difficulty in evaluation solutions to psychological issues and all of the cost and marketing issues.