Insurance

We does not accept insurance.

Our practice has decided not to take insurance clients due to the limitations to the psychotherapeutic process associated with insurance review and regulations.  Insurance companies regulate the total number and frequency of appointments, and often demand specific treatment protocols and regular assessments in order to cover the costs.  Furthermore, they often require defined behavioral goals related to rigid diagnoses, and can cut off payment for therapy after these initially established goals have been achieved.  Their demand for such narrow justification for therapeutic work can impede what we believe to be more important in the treatment process: the cultivation of self-awareness, emotional growth, and the continued achievement of an evolving set of goals.  This is not to say that we do not also target a reduction in your symptoms and foster important behavioral changes, but we are not restricted in how we engage by the views of insurance companies that tend to focus on medicalized understandings and reducing their own costs.

Here at Stephen L. Salter PsyD., we focus on understanding the individual and not on treating a diagnosis per se.  We feel that diagnoses can be useful but, without prioritizing other dimensions of a person as well, can create a reductive understanding.  One-size-fits-all treatments that fit with these reductive understandings miss the many vast opportunities of the therapeutic process, selling short the suffering and growing human being.
In addition, it is a benefit not to be forced to share confidential information with your insurance company in order to get approved for treatment, and not to carry the label of a mental health disorder in one's general health information.