Our country’s mental healthcare crisis is worsening.

What started as a simple breakdown in ability to care for our nation’s sick has become American’s newest trend.

In locations throughout North America, people are walking by themselves, talking to themselves.

Somewhere at Chicago Midway, a lonely businessman – dressed in a fine suit with polished Scandinavian alligator boots – is telling himself about a business proposal.

Meanwhile at a fitness club in Seattle, an energetic public-relations specialist is growing angrier and angrier while she runs on the treadmill, telling herself about her teenage daughter who possesses an insatiable taste for bad boys and adult beverages.

And finally, in a small town in Iowa, maybe even on a campus you know, a young man stands at a popular corner, giving pretty girls only a moment’s glance as he busily discusses his latest pyramid scheme with himself in a blatantly loud voice.

This, my friends is the newest fashion facade: the Bluetooth headset phone. If you’re unfamiliar with the product, it’s essentially a one-ear headset that works as a phone. It’s small enough to both fit into one’s pocket, and it’s savvy enough to belong in every one of Derek Zoolander’s best ensembles.

When a person uses one of these ear phones, he or she can comfortably update their daytime mini-planner (with the tiny pen, of course), switch over the tape on their promotional self-help audio tapes, eat power lunches and essentially do any other important business-minded tasks their hands would be unable to do with a more traditional phone.

The advantages of this technology, therefore, are obvious. No longer will people need to waste their precious energy holding their dinosaur-age Razor phones or practice the prehistoric art of finger-dialing. Everything is done on voice command, and due to the aura the phone single-handedly exudes, that voice will not only be more credible, but it will exude pheromones that will put the opposite sex floundering before you, begging for your tools of procreation.

In reality, I think it was all a matter of time. When the i-Pod came out, the masses rejoiced because we no longer had to listen to the mind-swelling sounds of nature or other people. We could take long walks to class or runs around the lake with Slipknot in our pocket. In many ways, the headset phone is simply the next step on the way to complete social isolation, allowing Media to become our real best friend.

Okay, maybe that’s melodramatic, but where does it end? Gucci straightjackets?

Now, sarcasm aside, there is one decent place for this invention, and that’s in the car. If people have to talk on their phone while they drive, I assume it better that both their hands are at the helm. I think this would clean up a lot of road rage.

But, understanding that, one must also realize driving and talking with a headset phone (especially one that fits in the right ear, for those of you in the States), will inevitably deign yourself to the level of crazy cat women and car-radio singers.

So now that we know more, we can make wiser consumer decisions. The prices for Bluetooth headsets range from $30-60, a little cheaper than cell phones.

But, when asking this, we must ask ourselves if promoting a national mental healthcare crisis is truly worth saving a buck or two.

And they don’t make you look cool.