TherapySafetyNet is a volunteer coalition of psychologists and social workers in private practice in New York. Our coalition provides free referrals to eligible New Yorkers for reduced fee psychotherapy.

TherapySafetyNet is not a mental health agency and does not provide mental health services. Each participating professional is responsible for his or her independent practice.

Information exchanged via TherapySafetyNet.org does not constitute a professional relationship between individual respondents and any professional associated with our service.

A therapeutic relationship, if appropriate, will be agreed upon in writing following an initial consultation between an individual client and a particular professional member of the TherapySafetyNet network. In such a case, the therapeutic relationship exists only between the specific client and clinician involved, and not the entire network of professionals.

The information on any area or page of this site (TherapySafetyNet.org) and other sites owned by the practice of Geoffrey Steinberg, Psy.D. (drgeoffreysteinberg.com, chelseatherapy.com) is intended for information purposes only regarding available clinical services. The diagnosis or treatment of any particular disorder by the information provided on this website, or the links referred to by this website, is not recommended, intended, nor implied.

By completing TherapySafetyNet’s application for prospective clients, you are agreeing that your information may be reviewed by any of the mental health professionals who constitute the TherapySafetyNet network. A full listing of these professionals’ names and professional standings is available for your review in the Therapist Directory of TherapySafetyNet.org. Each therapist in our network is obligated to protect your privacy according to applicable state law and professional ethics. Your information will be maintained securely and will not be shared with any third parties outside of our network without your written permission.

We are continuing to build our coalition of socially responsible therapists. Our need currently is to round out our professional membership with additional male and Brooklyn-based psychologists and social workers in private practice.

Membership in TherapySafetyNet provides an organized way to fulfill the ethical obligation to devote some portion of one’s practice to serving those in need for minimal compensation.

Full details on membership benefits, responsibilities, and application procedure may be found on the Prospective Professionals page.

About TherapySafetyNet

Since 2007, TherapySafetyNet has been providing quality, affordable psychotherapy referrals to uninsured New Yorkers. Even with the recent passage of healthcare reforms, the need remains great. Visit TherapySafetyNet.org to utilize our free referral service, to join our network of professionals, or to volunteer to help us work toward our goals.

It’s a great challenge to make our services known to the vast population of uninsured New Yorkers who struggle to find affordable mental health care. You can help by taking two quick, simple steps that will increase the prominence of our website: Follow our blog and Like our Facebook page.

Please take a moment to do the following:

1. Visit our new website therapysafetynet.org and locate the Follow button in the lower right hand corner. Click the Follow button and enter your email address when prompted.

2. If you are a Facebook user, visit Facebook.com/TherapySafetyNet and “Like” our page.

Simply taking these two steps will be a huge help to our organization. The more TherapySafetyNet makes use of social networking, the lower our advertising costs. We learned in our Four-Year Outcome Evaluation that 68 percent of prospective clients found TherapySafetyNet by way of an internet search from paid advertising (i.e. Google Adwords).

While we continue to make use of participating professionals’ annual dues payments for paid advertising, our primary outreach strategy is to increase TherapySafetyNet’s visibility through social networking, which is somewhat more labor intensive but can reduce our reliance on paid advertisements.

Social networking is also more effective in its reach: While an advertisement might be seen once by a prospective client, a Blog or Facebook entry might be seen by many prospective clients and professional referral sources over a long period of time.

If you feel moved to do even more, there are plenty of additional ways to help our web presence:

• Comment on any of the information we post on our website or Facebook page.
• Share or repost information information posted by TherapySafetyNet to your own social or professional networks.
• Become a Blogger for TherapySafetyNet—contact us for details.

About TherapySafetyNet

Administered by its volunteer coalition members, TherapySafetyNet operates as a free referral service to connect uninsured New Yorkers with affordable psychotherapy in private practice settings. Each of our participating psychologists and social workers work with uninsured clients at significantly reduced fees according to an income-sensitive sliding scale. To learn more about our coalition of socially responsible therapists and the services we offer, visit TherapySafetyNet.org.

Today the new TherapySafetyNet website goes live. We have developed a fresh new design with increased simplicity and usability.

As before, the site includes our directory of socially responsible therapists–psychologists and social workers practicing in Manhattan and Brooklyn, each of whom is committed to our cooperative vision of providing affordable psychotherapy to uninsured New Yorkers.

Tags are strictly applied to identify participating clinicians’ locations and areas of expertise. The tag cloud on the lower left side of each page provides easy reference to identify clinicians with particular areas of expertise. For example, the addictions and substance abuse tag will reveal an indexed list of therapists with that specialization.

We have intentionally omitted contact information for our participating clinicians on the publicly visible parts of the website. Rather than contacting a therapist directly, we ask prospective clients to submit a secure online application to request a referral to the therapist of their choice. Prospective clients may apply for services via the  Client Inquiry page.

For those prospective clients who are not eligible for a referral through TherapySafetyNet, we have provided lists of additional mental health resources, including resources for New Yorkers with health insurance and low cost resources for those without health insurance.

Professionals

Whereas before our public and private areas were divided between two sites, the new site incorporates both information for the public and password protected pages for participating clinicians. Information for prospective clinicians interested in joining our coalition may be found here.

Outreach

We welcome contributors to our news section. While our news section will continue to present announcements about TherapySafetyNet, we have envisioned this as a place for opinion and commentary on healthcare reform as it impacts mental health services. Volunteer bloggers, please contact us.

Please explore the new website and share it with your friends and colleagues. Everyone knows someone who is uninsured and someday may be in need of an affordable option for psychotherapy. Please help us spread the word by subscribing, reposting, reblogging, and helping TherapySafetyNet be known in the community.

About TherapySafetyNet

TherapySafetyNet was founded in 2007 by Dr. Geoffrey Steinberg to address the mental health needs of New Yorkers who would otherwise fall through the cracks. An estimated 1.2 million New York city residents do not have employer-sponsored health insurance, yet do not qualify for publicly-funded programs such as Medicare or Medicaid.

Administered by its volunteer coalition members, TherapySafetyNet operates as a free referral service to connect uninsured New Yorkers with affordable psychotherapy in private practice settings. Each of our participating psychologists and social workers work with uninsured clients at significantly reduced fees according to an income-sensitive sliding scale.

In 2011, TherapySafetyNet undertook a self-study project to evaluate and document its performance over its first four years of service. The results of this project may be found here. To learn more about our coalition and the services we offer, visit TherapySafetyNet.org.

Each week we are featuring a different clinician who participates in TherapySafetyNet’s coalition of socially responsible therapists.

Visit TherapySafetyNet’s Facebook page to read about this week’s featured clinician.

The final report of our self-study evaluation is now available at TherapySafetyNet.org. Main finding:

“Since its inception, TherapySafetyNet has served a valuable role in metropolitan New York by assisting prospective clients in finding mental health services they can afford. Of the 300 outcomes recorded since 2007, we have referred 103 uninsured clients to participating psychologists and social workers in private practice at significantly reduced fees, thus connecting uninsured New Yorkers with psychotherapy of a quality that would otherwise be inaccessible and unaffordable.”

Read the full report here:

Therapy Safety Net: Four Year Outcome Evaluation of a Free Referral Service for Uninsured New Yorkers

TherapySafetyNet is continually finding new ways to use our Facebook page to serve our mission of helping uninsured New Yorkers find psychotherapy at affordable fees. Our application for prospective clients may now be accessed directly on Facebook by clicking the SurveyMonkey  app on the left side of TherapySafetyNet’s Facebook page.

In recognition of four years of service to New York City, we are currently preparing a report of TherapySafetyNet’s outcome data. Please check our Facebook page for snapshots of the outcomes prior to release of the full report later this month.

Effectively immediately, prospective clients will be required to submit their most recent 1040 tax form when applying for reduced fee services. This will allow our referral coordinators to verify eligibility. Reduced fees will be determined on a sliding scale based on the income information provided.

Please see the Client Inquiry page for details on submitting proof of income.

Some clinicians have asked if they may refer a potential client directly to a professional in the TherapySafetyNet network. We ask that if this is a referral for uninsured client seeking reduced fee services via TherapySafetyNet, please refer the prospective client to our website TherapySafetyNet.org where the client may request services by completing a secure form on the Client Inquiry page. A referral coordinator will contact the prospective client to determine their eligibility and help them through the referral process. Questions, please contact us by email.

At the time of our inception three years ago, TherapySafetyNet sought to serve the mental health needs of the uninsured throughout the state of New York.

Experience has shown this was too ambitious a goal.

As a small, volunteer run coalition centered in Manhattan, we have found it exceedingly difficult to make our services known to uninsured populations in the state as a whole.

At the peak of our membership, professionals working everywhere from Ulster County to Ithaca have been involved in this project. However, less than one percent of the prospective clients making requests for referrals were from people living outside of New York City.

At our most recent executive committee meeting it was decided to focus our efforts more narrowly on New York City, where the need remains great, and where we are best situated to respond to such needs.

TherapySafetyNet will continue to connect uninsured New York City residents with psychologists and social workers who are able to offer services at fees that uninsured clients can afford.

With surprising frequency TherapySafetyNet receives inquiries from people who believe their insurance plan does not include coverage for mental health benefits and are turning to us for help in finding a therapist who will provide therapy at a fee they can afford. With very few exceptions, this belief is incorrect, and we try to refer insured people to a psychologist or social worker who accepts his or her insurance. Particularly since the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act went into effect this year, the vast majority insured individuals are now  required by law to have mental health benefits equal to their medical benefits in terms of copayments, limitations, and deductibles. This article in the Washington Post provides a concise description of benefits under the new law:

New health-care law improves coverage for mental illness.

We at TherapySafetyNet hope someday to become obsolete. This can only happen when every New Yorker has health insurance coverage. We expect to see the gap start to shrink as health care reform becomes implemented. There’s a long way to go, but a step in this direction was announced by Governor Patterson: The New York Bridge Plan. Learn more about it here:

Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan: NY Bridge Plan

I came up with the concept of TherapySafetyNet in September 2007. I was receiving more calls from prospective clients than I could accept into my practice, and some of them stood out because they seemed stuck in a kind of benefits purgatory. Uninsured, their income was too high to qualify for social services, yet their employers offered no healthcare coverage. It was hit or miss to suggest alternate referrals to those prospective clients. While I’ve always got an assortment of excellent colleagues to suggest, at any given time most would have only one or two potential openings on a ‘sliding scale.’ At the same time, I had extra web site capacity, so I thought, is there any way these elements could be put together to help?

So what started as a bit of web site tooling around in my living room became TherapySafetyNet.org, a free referral service to connect uninsured New Yorkers with socially responsible therapists in private practice.

We’ve grown considerably, and experienced our share of growth pains along the way. TherapySafetyNet is now a coalition of psychologists and social workers in private practice, each of whom agrees to devote some portion of their work to uninsured clients at a significantly reduced fee.

As we grew in both membership and client inquiries, the administrative demands became too much for me to do alone. Several professionals in our coalition pitched in with the labor involved, notably Evelyn Shaw, LMSW, Donna Seroff, LCSW, Laura Freiman, LCSW, and Janis McAdams, Psy.D. The very heart of our service is made of their tireless volunteer efforts, individually handling each inquiry and referral, as well as contributing to the development of TherapySafetyNet as an organization.

In a typical month, 15 to 20 uninsured people contact us for help securing a referral for affordable therapy. Considering the fact that an estimated 1.2 million uninsured people are living in New York City, we are barely reaching our intended audience. One of our biggest challenges is to make our service widely known. To this end, we’ve done outreach to other organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) that may encounter uninsured New Yorkers and refer them to us. We’ve made our services known to local colleges whose students are not required to have health insurance. Our services are listed with organizations that serve local artists, such as The Field and Dance Elephant. And TherapySafetyNet’s page on Facebook receives 100 visitors in an average week. Beyond these achievements, our need for help with public relations remains strong.

We’ve gone through considerable turnover in our professional membership in the past two and half years. In the beginning we did not do a good enough job making it clear to interested mental health professionals how TherapySafetyNet differs from other websites that present directories of therapists in private practice. For some time, we faced differences in expectations–therapists who were willing to reduce their fees slightly, but not far enough to meet the actual needs of uninsured people. By now, we have addressed this discrepancy through more rigorous membership requirements.

To be clear, membership in TherapySafetyNet is not for every New York psychologist or social worker under the sun. What we offer is an organized way to fulfill the ethical imperative to devote some portion of one’s practice to working with clients in need, for little or no compensation. We continue to invite socially responsible therapists to join our coalition, and our need currently is greatest for those practicing in Brooklyn.

Please visit www.TherapySafetyNet.org to learn more about our efforts to help uninsured New Yorkers find quality, affordable psychothearpy.

Geoffrey Steinberg, Psy.D.
Executive Director
www.TherapySafetyNet.org

The Health Blog of the Wall Street Journal  included an post regarding the difficulty physicians face in finding quality, affordable mental health referrals for their patients. (Read the full article here). Evelyn Shaw, LMSW responded with the following comment:

I echo everyone’s sentiments on the state of the mental health care system. It is a national shame.

There are, however, mental health professionals who make social justice part of their professional mission, and who make themselves financially accessible to those who are un- or under-insured. But finding such a therapist is an enormous challenge.

Nobody hangs out a shingle advertising reduced-fee psychotherapy. Professional membership organizations admonish us not to “cheapen the profession” by reducing our rates.

Word of mouth is the name of the game, and those who are not in this very tiny word-of-mouth loop are left high and dry.

Like Joseph, I am fortunate to be part of a fledgling but committed network of socially conscious psychotherapists in the New York City area. Getting the word out is an ongoing challenge.

I’d suggest that folks use search terms like “sliding scale fee therapy”,
“low cost therapy”, “sliding scale psychotherapy”, and “therapy referral service.” And check out Therapy Safety Net’s website (therapysafetynet.org) to see what we’re doing.

Reference

Wang, S. (April 14, 2009). Finding referrals for mental-health patients often elusive. Wall Street Journal: Health Blog.http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/04/14/finding-referrals-for-mental-health-patients-often-elusive/

The National Council on Aging provides a web-based tool to help you determine if you qualify for social services, including health care and prescription drug coverage:

Benefits Check-Up

Though the focus of TherapySafetyNet remains the provision of psychotherapy to uninsured individuals, some visitors to our site do have health insurance and have expressed interest in knowing whether any of our participating therapists are in-network.

For prospective clients who have health insurance, we will be adding our therapists’ insurance panel participation information to our directory:

Insurance Participation