FAQ

Individual therapy session: $130

Family therapy session: $150

Couples therapy session: $170

A standard session is 50-55 minutes long. If longer or shorter sessions are clinically indicated, we will discuss the fee in advance.

90-minute intake session: 

$195 for individual therapy; $225 for family therapy; $255 for couples therapy

A 90-minute intake session is not required, but is strongly recommended to ensure a thorough initial assessment.

According the No Surprises Act, you have the right to receive a Good Faith Estimate of what your services may cost. If there are any changes to your fees, you will be notified in writing 60 days in advance of the change.

I currently am licensed to provide services for clients located in Missouri, in person and via telehealth. Check back soon for additional states served.

My office is located at Casa de Salud's Mental Health Collaborative at 1015 S. Compton Ave. St. Louis, MO 63104.

I do not take insurance at this time, but I can support you in utilizing your health insurance's out-of-network benefits using Reimbursify.

I offer sliding-scale fees to a limited number of clients based on financial need. For more information, please contact me.

For those with insurance, I can provide you with a superbill (receipt of therapy services rendered to treat a specific diagnosis) so that you can utilize any out-of-network benefits your insurance plan provides and potentially receive reimbursement from your insurance provider. I partner with Reimbursify to make this process easier for my clients, please let me know if you'd like to use this service!

Clients can also use FSA & HSA payment methods, if they have those available through their healthcare plan.

Navigating the insurance and healthcare labyrinth is hard! I'm happy to assist clients in understanding and managing these options. I also respect that you may need to see an in-network provider, and I'm happy to share referrals to other providers.

We'll spend our first session gathering information about what brings you to therapy, your history, and getting a general feel for whether we'll be a good fit. After that, it largely depends on what type of therapy we're engaging in. Typically I try to provide space for exploration of different topics that are important to you, while balancing our therapy's need to have focus and continuity in order for you to achieve growth and goals. Cognitive- and behaviorally-based therapies will usually have more structured activities than psychodynamic, experiential/somatic, and emotion-focused therapies, which prioritize exploration.

I don't have a standard way to begin session, as you and your needs guide the content of what we do. If you're feeling blank with where to start or nervous about what to share, just know that this is a normal part of the process! You will grow more comfortable and gain more clarity on what feels helpful as we continue to work together, and you'll get more confident sharing this information with me so that I can better support you. I'll also help point out when we're on a stuck point or need to switch gears on a planned activity to attend to what's in the room — and when we need to stay the course.

Questions I might start session with include:

What stayed with you from our last session?

How have you been doing on your goals this week?

Where should we start today?

In general, we will work together once a week. As you start seeing significant, stable improvement in your symptoms and are meeting/maintaining your goals, we can lessen sessions to biweekly, once a month, or as needed.

The length of your treatment is completely individualized. It depends on the severity and complexity of the problem you're seeking help with, as well as how long you've been dealing with the issue. Another factor is how big or small your goals are. In general, bigger goals and more complex or longstanding issues take more time, and smaller goals and newer issues take less time. Financial and time constraints might also determine the length of your treatment.

That said, the duration of ERP therapy (exposure and response prevention) is often relatively short and can be time-limited to a set number of sessions that you decide. While individual exceptions still apply, ERP has been shown to be effective in as few as 12-20 sessions for OCD, as an emerging strategy to supplement and strengthen therapy for eating disorders (Schaumberg et al., 2021), and can be effective in as few as one exposure session for specific phobias (Odgers et al., 2022).

I offer time-limited ERP for as few as 4 sessions, depending on client needs and preferences. These sessions can be stand-alone or supplemental to your primary therapy with me or with other providers.

I offer both in-person and telehealth services based on your needs and what is most clinically appropriate for your care. For family therapy, sessions that include children must be in-person, however I am able to provide parent-only sessions via telehealth as needed.

My office is located at Casa de Salud's Mental Health Collaborative at 1015 S. Compton Ave. St. Louis, MO 63104.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a type of therapy where, with the help of your therapist, you confront something that provokes high anxiety and intrusive thoughts, and then you prevent yourself from acting on compulsive behaviors and thoughts that ultimately worsen your anxiety. Overtime, this process makes anxiety more manageable, helping you to break free from intrusive thoughts, fears and phobias. ERP is the gold-standard treatment for OCD and phobias, and is an emerging treatment for eating disorders. You can read more about it here or in the journal articles cited at the bottom of this page.

Examples of clinical issues I treat with ERP

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Phobias

Eating Disorders:

Fear Foods

Body Fears

Binge Cues

Purge Cues

Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)

I offer ERP as ongoing therapy, time-limited therapy (min. 4 sessions), and/or as a supplement to your or your child's primary therapy. If you believe you or your child would benefit, reach out today to explore how we can integrate ERP into your treatment plan.

Research suggests that improved outcomes for children and adolescents often occurs when some or all of their family participates in therapy (Dowell & Ogles, 2010). In my own experience, I've found that when I'm able to regularly engage with both children and caregivers, I'm more effective in treating issues that appear to "belong" to one member of the family. This leads to positive, long-lasting change for your child and closer, healthier family relationships overall. For this reason, I typically do not provide exclusively individual therapy for youth. If I'm working with your child, we will have a mix of parent-only, child-only, and parent-child sessions, taking into account your family's scheduling constraints as well as your child's treatment needs. 

If this doesn't work for you, that's okay! There are many ways to treat youth mental health concerns, so I'm happy to provide referrals to therapists who treat youth individually. Please note that I do not work with children younger than 12 years old.

Most insurance companies do not cover couples/family therapy due to their requirement that therapy is "medically necessary." Insurance companies define medical necessity very narrowly, essentially excluding coverage for most couples and families seeking to resolve troubling interpersonal issues and longstanding conflict. It's very frustrating! That said, if you're looking for therapy for your child who qualifies for a mental health diagnosis, it's likely that insurance would cover parental/family participation in therapy. Couples therapy can be covered in a similar way, with one member of the couple receiving a diagnosis and being the identified client, but there are limitations to this method.

Here are two decent explainers that may be helpful in searching for a couples therapist and navigating the mental health insurance maze.

Schaumberg, K., Reilly, E. E., Gorrell, S., Levinson, C. A., Farrell, N. R., Brown, T. A., Smith, K. M., Schaefer, L. M., Essayli, J. H., Haynos, A. F., & Anderson, L. M. (2021). Conceptualizing eating disorder psychopathology using an anxiety disorders framework: Evidence and implications for exposure-based clinical research. Clinical psychology review, 83, 101952. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101952

Odgers, K., Kershaw, K. A., Li, S. H., & Graham, B. M. (2022). The relative efficacy and efficiency of single- and multi-session exposure therapies for specific phobia: A meta-analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 159, 104203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2022.104203 

Dowell, K. A., & Ogles, B. M. (2010). The Effects of Parent Participation on Child Psychotherapy Outcome: A Meta-Analytic Review. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 39(2), 151–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374410903532585