Regulations and Conditions

Psychotherapist

Making appointments for psychotherapy sessions is absolutely necessary. You can make appointments by phone, SMS or email. For most of the cases, it is required to have at least once weekly therapy sessions in order to get efficient results. It is convenient to fix a certain day and time every week for the therapy appointment, however, it is not obligatory. An individual or couple therapy session normally takes 45 minutes (altogether 50 minutes, including 5 minutes for documentation after the session). But one can also request double sessions and would in this case be charged for two therapy hours. Group therapy sessions take 90 minutes.

Punctuality is of very high importance. An appointment must be cancelled at least 48 hours in advance. If an appointment is forgotten or cancelled late, the patient might be charged for the missed session.

Patients may pay for their therapy session in cash or by bank transfer. They receive a receipt upon payment and can, with that receipt, claim a partial refund (only in cases of individual or group therapy) from their health insurance, in cases where full coverage by the insurance is not possible.

All of the contents of therapy are highly confidential, and the therapist is not allowed to share what a patient discusses with him or her in the therapy, unless it is required to save a life or prevent actual harm. For example, if a suicidal patient cannot efficiently be protected against a suicide attempt, according to the therapist’s judgement, the therapist may inform the police in order to save the patient’s life. Even the content of therapies with children and adolescents are regarded as confidential and cannot be discussed with anyone else, even the parents or legal guardians.

Patients are allowed and even urged to speak as openly as they can about anything and everything in therapy. Social etiquette, shame, the therapist’s possible feelings or anything else should not get in the way of speaking openly. The more openly and honestly one speaks in therapy, the more one benefits from it.

A personal relationship between therapist and patients outside the psychotherapeutic relationship is prohibited and harmful to both parties. For example, a therapist may not form a friendship, partnership, business deal and such with the patients.

If you are my patient, your friends, family members and people who have a close contact with you normally cannot also separately be in individual therapy with me. In the case that your partner, friend or someone close to you needs therapy, I can try and refer them to a colleague.

If couple and individual psychotherapy are both required and only one can be afforded, couple therapy usually takes precedence. It is possible for different forms of therapies to be conducted simultaneously by different therapists.

Psychotherapy is highly efficient in treating a great range of problems, but it normally takes time. So if you decide to make positive changes in your life by starting a therapy, be patient, and the results you expect, and sometimes even positive changes you do not expect will come with time.

I do have a contract with the insurance and if there are availabilities at your insurance, I can offer you therapy with full coverage of the insurance, so that you pay nothing for your therapy sessions. If there are no availabilities for full coverage at your insurance, it is possible to receive a partial reimbursement for the therapy fees you pay (more information following).

In order to have the therapy paid by the insurance or to receive a reimbursement from the insurance, in both cases you require a referral from your general practitioner or your psychiatrist (a yellow form with the title Bestätigung für Psychotherapie) which you send to the insurance together with my receipts.

In order to have the therapy paid by the insurance or to receive a reimbursement from the insurance, in both cases you require a referral from your general practitioner or your psychiatrist (a yellow form with the title Bestätigung für Psychotherapie) which you send to the insurance together with my receipts.

If you start the therapy with the full coverage of your insurance, the first 10 sessions only require a referral from your medical doctor. Before the 11^th session, I write you a contract and send it to the insurance together with the referral. It takes a couple of weeks normally, for the insurance to respond.

If we use the sessions that have been provided by the insurance, but you still require therapy, I will write another contract. For the second contract, the insurance requires another referral (yellow form) AND a letter from a specialist (psychiatrist, psychologist or neurologist).

If there are no availabilities, the insurance reimburses a part of your therapy sessions (28,- for individual therapy sessions and 10,- for group therapy sessions) after you have paid them. In order to receive the reimbursement, you must send my receipts to your insurance. If you have not paid in cash but have used bank transfer to pay for your therapy session, you also need to provide the insurance with your payment confirmation such as a bank statement.

The first 10 sessions or the reimbursement of the first 10 sessions only requires a referral from your general practitioner or psychiatrist and require no application to the insurance. Before the 11^th session, I can write you a contract to the insurance, so the therapy sessions or the reimbursements are accepted for further therapy sessions. For writing the contract for the insurance reimbursement, I charge you the equivalent of a therapy session, i.e. 110,-.