A GoodTherapy.org News Update Presented by Daniel Brezenoff, LCSW
Click here to contact Daniel and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile
From the good news / bad news department: Mainstream media sources are reporting that American psychiatrists have essentially stopped practicing psychotherapy – except with private paying clients, and even then only rarely – and are dealing almost exclusively with medication management. Over the last twenty years, the percentage of psychiatrists offering talk therapy has declined from a little less than half to a little more than one quarter, according to the most recent National Ambulatory Care Survey. As a result, the success rates for treating depression and anxiety have slipped, since a combination of talk and medicine is always the preferred treatment.
The cause? Mainly, managed care. Insurance companies prefer the faster and cheaper route to symptom management: pills. This would seem to be bad news for clients, bad news for therapists, and bad news for anyone concerned about the mental health of the general public. So what good news could there possibly be?
Well, if you’re a provider of talk therapy who isn’t a psychiatrist, you may find reason to smile about this; it means referrals to psychologists, social workers and MFT’s should be increasing. Although the study did not look at this trend in particular, anecdotal evidence – reports from talk therapists and managed care case managers – suggest that therapy is still happening, it’s just that non-medical (and therefore, not coincidentally , lower paid) professionals are providing it. Because whereas an insurance company may not want to pay two to three hundred dollars per hour for the listening ear of a psychiatrist, the lower reimbursement rate – sometimes lower by half or more – given to, say, a social worker, and limited to perhaps 24 visits per year, lets them keep their profit margin while still being able to say they support the proven results of psychotherapy.
So in practical terms, this may not be so bad. Psychiatrists can focus more on training as experts in psychopharmacology, a profoundly dense and complicated field that is only growing in complexity. Meanwhile other professionals, if we are wise, can develop relationships with local psychiatrists and managed care companies to increase our referral base and get paid to do what we love – and what we were trained to do: psychotherapy, pill free.
Click here to contact Daniel and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile
This entry was posted
on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 11:27 pm and is filed under News Items, Psychotropic Medication.
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You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
A GoodTherapy.org News Update Presented by Daniel Brezenoff, LCSW
Click here to contact Daniel and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile
From the good news / bad news department: Mainstream media sources are reporting that American psychiatrists have essentially stopped practicing psychotherapy – except with private paying clients, and even then only rarely – and are dealing almost exclusively with medication management. Over the last twenty years, the percentage of psychiatrists offering talk therapy has declined from a little less than half to a little more than one quarter, according to the most recent National Ambulatory Care Survey. As a result, the success rates for treating depression and anxiety have slipped, since a combination of talk and medicine is always the preferred treatment.
The cause? Mainly, managed care. Insurance companies prefer the faster and cheaper route to symptom management: pills. This would seem to be bad news for clients, bad news for therapists, and bad news for anyone concerned about the mental health of the general public. So what good news could there possibly be?
Well, if you’re a provider of talk therapy who isn’t a psychiatrist, you may find reason to smile about this; it means referrals to psychologists, social workers and MFT’s should be increasing. Although the study did not look at this trend in particular, anecdotal evidence – reports from talk therapists and managed care case managers – suggest that therapy is still happening, it’s just that non-medical (and therefore, not coincidentally , lower paid) professionals are providing it. Because whereas an insurance company may not want to pay two to three hundred dollars per hour for the listening ear of a psychiatrist, the lower reimbursement rate – sometimes lower by half or more – given to, say, a social worker, and limited to perhaps 24 visits per year, lets them keep their profit margin while still being able to say they support the proven results of psychotherapy.
So in practical terms, this may not be so bad. Psychiatrists can focus more on training as experts in psychopharmacology, a profoundly dense and complicated field that is only growing in complexity. Meanwhile other professionals, if we are wise, can develop relationships with local psychiatrists and managed care companies to increase our referral base and get paid to do what we love – and what we were trained to do: psychotherapy, pill free.
Click here to contact Daniel and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 11:27 pm and is filed under News Items, Psychotropic Medication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.