Jonathan bade his time long enough, marshalling his arguments in secret like Marshal Zhukov did for Operation Uranus. Now that he dropped the hammer on Chihiro, the effect is equally devastating [link].

There's nothing left for me to debate, except to pick up the pieces and observe that in my experience the preoccupation with "professional help" is deeply unhealthy. By creating a comforting relief from the ouside, the specialist makes the illness more attractive and tends to draw the treated mind deeper into it. It is downright dangerous and worse, is imminently avoidable in most cases. If this applies to Chihiro is speculative, of course. She is after all completely fictional and thus malleable for the writer.

LATE UPDATE: Kurogane joins Jonathan:

... more especially when I was totally lead to think that Chihiro was going to commit suicide at that point.

This thought did not occur to me when I was watching for some reason, so my first instinct was to disagree with Jonathan. But like I said, it was a well framed response, and now we see Kuro doing the same interpretation.

UPDATE 2008/11/11: Jonathan posted a note for ef ~melodies~, the sequel. Apparently authors tried to address the question just why Kei does not visit Chihiro. The idiocy of it all just leaves me speechless, because it never was a problem for me in the first place. So, is Kei a jerk? But of course! She deleted those voicemails, didn't she? Good thing I passed on the sequel.