Insurance is accepted for covered services
to individuals for diagnosed mental-health issues--plans including :
- Excellus and most related Blues
- Medicare
- Aetna
-
MVP
- Some others.
Ask your insurance
provider about your coverage for Individual Psychotherapy with a licensed psychologist.
Most policies exclude coverage for marital/relationship problems, unless counseling on such
problems is part of the individual-psychotherapy plan and work focused on the diagnosed mental-health problem. Again, ask
your insurer.
Filing an insurance claim for mental-health
treatment for what is actually only marriage counseling is insurance fraud--with possibly serious legal and financial consequences.
So, to say it differently,
individual psychotherapy, with an insurance claim based on treatment of a properly diagnosed mental-health problem (such as
anxiety or depression) may sometimes involve relationship counseling, but the genuine mental-health problem must be the main
and actual target of the therapeutic intervention. If the spouse is seen at all, they are seen only in a collateral status--they
are not a patient--with the aim being to help the patient with the presenting mental-health problem.
In the absence of a mental-health issue, if you have marital or other relationship problems and
need individual or joint counseling, please see me for that--for which, usually, there is no insurance coverage. There are
some few insurance plans that do cover marriage-counseling services.
Ask you insurer.
