Our Fees for Services
STLDBT attempts to make our services fit almost every budget by recruiting talented, caring therapists with different levels of experience, training, and licensure. We offer a few slots at $90 per session with provisionally licensed counselors and social workers currently enrolled in our DBT Academy certification prep program. Fees run up to $160 per session for a nationally certified DBT therapist.
Within this range, each STLDBT therapist sets their own fees based on their experience, training, and licensure. Fees also vary depending on whether you are seeking individual, family or couples therapy.
What is included at that price?
Self-pay client session fees (non-insurance) include between session coaching calls. Coaching calls are a great way to help you get support between sessions in quick, small doses. Coaching calls tend to last 5-10 minutes as needed and help you apply skills in the moments you most need them. They are also a great way to get immediate feedback when you have accomplished a therapy goal or replaced a problem behavior with a skillful one.
Insurance
We do have a small number of therapists who are credentialed in-network with:
United Health Care
Aetna
Cigna/Evernorth
Please specify at the time of scheduling if you have any of these insurance plans so we can provide you with information about what is and is not covered by your plan. Generally speaking, Insurance only tends to cover individual sessions. Group sessions and coaching calls are billed separately and out of network.
Most of the Benefits, Far Fewer Headaches: Filing Out-Of-Network Insurance
St Louis DBT believes in empowering clients to choose the level and duration of their own treatment. We also believe that a therapist’s time is better spent working with their clients and researching best practices rather than spending hours on the phone negotiating with insurance companies. Given this, most of our clinicians have made the decision to be a fee-for-service provider.
You will have online access to your billing statement showing all the required information needed to obtain out-of-network benefits. Basically, your insurance company will reimburse you a percentage of what you are paying for services.
To find out whether your insurance offers out-of-network reimbursements for therapy services and how much (what percentage) they pay, take a look at this quick and easy guide with questions to ask your insurance company. We would be happy to assist you with this call if it poses a barrier to your treatment.
Five Reasons you benefit from out-of-network insurance
ONE: The insurance company cannot dictate how many sessions you get. That choice remains with you and your therapist
TWO: The insurance company does not get your private health information (other than a diagnosis, dates of service and type of service).
THREE: Often the out-of-pocket expense is nearly the same or sometimes even less than what you would have to pay in deductibles and co-pays for an in-network provider
FOUR: Many people get their reimbursement check from the insurance company before they even have to pay the balance on the credit card they use at time of service!
FIVE: Since your therapist is not spending hours a week on the phone with your insurance company, they are able to dedicate their time and talents to serving YOU. The therapist is able to use that time to research best practices and fresh interventions, be attentive and responsive to you, and more focused on you rather than fighting with insurance companies to get paid.
Partial Fee Reductions (Scholarships) for Therapy
You can request a partial scholarship to help you pay your therapist’s fee. FULL SCHOLARSHIPS ARE NOT AVAILABLE. Scholarships are set up for a limited period of time (typically 3 months) and renewal is based on progress toward treatment goals. So, the harder you work at healing, the more likely your scholarship will be renewed.
Each therapist determines whether a scholarship will be offered (each therapist has a limited number of scholarships), how much the scholarship will be, how long it will be offered and whether it will be renewed.
Your therapist will ask you some basic questions about what you can afford and if you have out-of-network health insurance benefits. Scholarships will take into account how much your insurance company will reimburse you for out of network benefits. We have put together a guide with the questions you need to ask your insurance company.
Each therapist has differing numbers of scholarships available. There may be times when no scholarships are left in which case you will be offered a spot on our waiting list. While we cannot guarantee we can accommodate everyone, we do our best to make therapy as affordable as possible.
Skills Groups
All skills groups are fee-for-service, regardless of whether or not you have one of the insurances listed above. Skills groups cost $60 per session for individuals and $85-90 per class for families (teen and a caregiver). When you sign up for a skills group, you are committing to a “course” of classes — a certain number of sessions (typically 6-8) regardless of whether you attend or not.
Payment due at time of service
Payment for therapy is made at each session unless other arrangements are made in advance with your therapist. We accept cash, debit, HSA, and credit cards. Most sessions are 50-55 minutes long.
Pay-it-Forward Program
Have you or someone you love been positively impacted by mental health or DBT programming? Would you like to ensure that services are available to people regardless of their ability to pay full fee? Please consider donating to our Pay-it-Forward Program.
A gift of $1300 (or $108 per month for 1 year) will afford an individual 26 weeks of life-saving skills group programming
A gift of $1950 (or $162.50 per month for 1 year) will grant a family a full round of skills classes for a teen or child and their caregiver
A gift of any size will help offset the costs of crucial treatment for those suffering from often debilitating depression, anxiety, and/or sucidal tendancies