Therapy for ADHD in Los Angeles & Online in California

I know how hard it can be to take the first step and reach out for psychological assessment, so I pride myself on beginning with new clients as soon as possible. This helps capitalize on the momentum and motivation you are experiencing, and allows us to start working towards finding answers and identifying ways to alleviate your symptoms at the earliest possible date.

I devote Mondays and Tuesdays to therapy and Wednesdays, Thursdays, & Fridays to assessment. I offer a premium rate for weekend testing (Saturdays and Sundays). The first step is providing your availabilities for upcoming Thursdays and Fridays. Feel free to let me know your order of preference of upcoming dates, and I will do my best to accommodate.

My fee is $295 for individual therapy and $345 for couples therapy. These rates are based on the years of generalist education and specialist  training I have completed and the continued education and training I engage in. This ensures that I am prepared to pull from a wide variety of modalities to create a unique, personalized therapy for each patient based on their individual needs. There is no “one size fits all” mode of therapy. You’re a unique person with your own experiences and needs, so your therapy should be an adaptable and empowering approach that we collaborate on together.

At the moment, all my clients are virtual – we work together using SimplePractice’s HIPAA-compliant video platform. This offers convenience of therapy fitting in amongst busy schedules without planning and allotting time for commutes, parking, etc. If you are interested in incorporating in-person, we can discuss post-summer options or I can refer you to exclusively in-person clinicians.

The standard therapy schedule is once weekly. More seldom than that leads to therapy involving a great deal of “catch up” rather than progress. It is also more challenging to make therapeutic progress with appointments every-other-week since it is harder to track changes in symptomology. Some clients prefer to meet more frequently at the start of therapy to “get the ball rolling” in the initial stages, when they are contextualizing their symptoms and learning behavioral strategies to alleviate them. My goal is that, as progress is made over time, you will be able to transition to every-other-week sessions, then monthly, and then only occasional check-in’s before terminating therapy when it is no longer needed for you to thrive.

I don’t accept insurance but I do provide superbills for you to submit to your insurance for reimbursement. If you’re curious what that means, click here for an example of a Superbill: https://support.simplepractice.com/hc/article_attachments/360091826332/superbill.simplepractice.superbill.png. I’ve had great success with patients getting reimbursed (many insurances, such as PPO’s, cover all or a significant portion of therapy and assessment post-deductible), but can never 100% guarantee this as insurance policies are ever-changing and each insurance company has different policies. If you’d like your insurance to cover your sessions, ask them if they reimburse/offer a co-pay for “out-of-network providers” (OON). Your OON benefits may be the same/close to your in-network (INN) benefits.

Great question! This is a topic I am passionate about, so if you are interested in learning the in’s and out’s of insurance within the world of psychology in the United States, please feel free to read on. Pursuing an in-network provider often entails many months of waiting to be matched with a therapist with openings for a particular insurance. In contrast, when I am accepting new clients, I offer sessions the very next week. It can be hard to motivate yourself to take the first step in pursuing therapy, so having months go by while you wait to be assigned a therapist who may or may not match your needs (let alone having extensive experience or expertise in them) can truly stall your progress.  Unfortunately, these issues are nothing new. In an academic article from 1999, Glosoff et al. explain: “Typical complaints expressed by mental health clinicians related to managed care arrangements include time limits or caps placed on the number of sessions approved, increased paperwork, decreased flexibility in treatment planning, dealing with the gatekeeper system, and the lack of qualified personnel acting as gatekeepers” (Newman & Bricklin, 1991).

When a therapist is on an insurance panel, the insurance company decides what your therapy will look like. They dictate how long your appointments will be, how often you can receive treatment, how long you can work with me for, and when they will simply cease paying for therapy (e.g.: after 10-15 sessions). I wholeheartedly disagree with a third-party determining this. I believe in empowering my clients to collaborate with me to determine what therapy will look like for them. I provide therapy for the duration of time needed to accomplish the treatment goals you set. Sometimes, this is a few weeks for acute issues. Sometimes, it’s much longer for more chronic, prominent, and intense issues or diagnoses. Insurance companies also insist upon certain types of psychological diagnoses to justify “medical necessity” for treatment. There are many types of issues that they do not deem worthy of therapy, so a patient can have had numerous therapy sessions before learning that their situation does not merit reimbursement from their insurance’s new policies. 

I also care deeply about protecting your confidentiality, as is my ethical duty as a psychologist. If we go directly through your insurance, then your insurance company can request all your private therapy notes, which means I can no longer ensure your privacy. Instead, I provide a safe, welcoming, space in which my patients can explore any topic, knowing that their records are held confidential with no exceptions other than what is required of me by law (a court order or the safety concerns we will review during your first session). Taking insurance presents ethical dilemmas as psychologists attempt to balance their obligations to their clients as well as to insurance companies.

Providing you with superbills that your insurance can reimburse you for removes these issues. If your insurance does not cover out-of-network therapy, I am happy to provide you with other options including unaffiliated third-party companies that can resolve your reimbursement by completing your out-of-network billing for you. Not taking insurance saves me an immense amount of time, which I devote to my focus: taking care of you, rather than filing paperwork and chasing down money from a claim.

Yes, because I am licensed in California, you must be located here in order to receive therapy from me. If you travel or are out of the state for short periods of time, we may well be able to continue teletherapy, but that will depend on the laws of the state/country you will be visiting. If you let me know of intended travels, I’ll check their regulations to see if we have the option of continuing therapy while you are outside of California.