Earn strictly private therapy through community volunteering

People Helping People Helping People

Preserving Private Therapy

Overcoming problems with insurance and at public clinics

Why we founded Volunteers in Psychotherapy in 1999

Managed Care destroys Privacy in Psychotherapy

Managed care has drastically damaged psychotherapy. Therapists must send reports about your personal therapy discussions to insurance companies when they demand them.   Many reasonable people are justifiably concerned about divulging personal information in therapy that will become part of their permanent medical, insurance or employment records.

Health insurers view personal problems as if they were illnesses.

However, in Psychiatry, no pathology of bodily tissue has been scientifically verified. Insurance companies can increase their profits by declaring psychotherapy of reasonable length “not medically necessary”. They increasingly rely on pills.

Human understanding and solutions for people’s personal problems are lost.

If your therapist works with your insurance or managed care company, they may bend to pressures to see you for only a small number of sessions. Therapists may be pressured to provide pills, and not therapy.
Your therapist will be less likely to really get to know how you think and feel. They may be less likely to learn of important personal experiences you have had which powerfully affected you, or to learn what is important to you in your life.  People find it hard to speak openly without real privacy — especially about difficult personal and family matters.   This is particularly true when privacy is undermined since therapists are required to send documentation or reports about people’s private discussions to insurers.

Managed Care companies control psychotherapy; clients lose control

Insurers decide how long therapy will continue. They increase corporate profits by strictly rationing therapy.

Psychotherapy is costly.

Many people who want to preserve their privacy and control, pay out of pocket for psychotherapy, if they can afford it.

Through VIP, clients earn therapy in exchange for their independent community volunteering.

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