Understanding Sliding Scale Therapy

We field a number of questions about sliding scale therapy in New York, and about what patients can expect when they come looking for some financial relief. Although each therapist and each individual case is different, there are some basic definitions that may help you in your search for an affordable option. This site includes a simple overview of low cost therapy, and includes this helpful passage that prescribes Step One in your search:

The first place to check is with your current therapist. Many, but not all, therapists offer a fee service schedule for cash-only clients that may “slide” – that is, the fee goes down based upon your income. If you’re making a middle-class salary, the discount offered by such sliding scales may not be much. But if you’re in the lower socio-economic class, this discounted fee schedule can cut a regular therapist’s fee in half or more.

We take pride in our commitment to community mental health, and that means searching tirelessly for ways to serve more people of different incomes and backgrounds whenever possible. Our sliding scale therapy options include experts across a number of fields, including LGBT therapy, depression therapy and many more.

If you’d like to apply for a round of therapy that falls within your means, please don’t hesitate to reach out to PPSC with any questions.

One More Endorsement for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

We wrote recently about the growing number of think pieces dedicated to “rediscovering” psychoanalysis and calling for its return to the mainstream. (Some of us maintained that it never went away, but no matter.) This recent piece in Forbes makes the case as well as any of them, pointing not just to the lasting and substantive benefits of analytic therapy, but also to its increasingly strong showing in a number of empirical analyses:

For example, a 2013 randomized control trial demonstrated the efficacy of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treating panic disorder. A 2010 meta-analytic review of available outcome studies showed that “empirical evidence supports the efficacy” of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It further showed that the magnitude of change in psychoanalytic psychotherapy is “as large as those reported for other therapies that have been actively promoted as ‘empirically supported’ and ‘evidence based’.”

But the piece also identifies one of the key criticisms leveled at this kind of therapy, namely that its bespoke nature resists a one-size-fits-all training regime, or testing protocol:

Because psychoanalytic psychotherapy adapts technique to the unique individuality of each patient, it can seem to some like all art and no science. “Where’s the manual!” goes the cry. The fact is that psychoanalytic psychotherapists typically rely on research to guide the moment-to-moment decisions of a clinical encounter, especially infant development research and increasingly neuroscience. If CBT, as a way to illustrate, can be thought of as someone expertly playing sheet music, psychoanalytic psychotherapy is more like well-structured improvisational jazz.

Of course this isn’t a flaw, but the source of psychoanalysis’s prodigious strength—and the reason so many people of different beliefs and predilections find it singularly effective.

Our psychoanalytic therapists offer depression therapy, anxiety therapy, LGBT-friendly therapy and even low-cost therapy right here in New York. To get started right away, click here.

Shining Light on Suicide

Suicide is the single most anguished gesture a person can make. Friends and family left behind often find themselves struggling to make sense of the act – was it a cry of shame, or pain, or fear, or perhaps just a function of emotional exhaustion? Specialists in psychology know that suicide is intimately associated with depression, which is one reason so many careful questions are asked whenever depression warrants hospitalization. Yet these efforts have generally failed to reduce the overall rate of suicide in America, which has risen sharply over the last two decades. Now a new population of people is speaking up for their chance to help: those who have tried, and failed, to take their own life:

Plans for speakers bureaus of survivors willing to tell their stories are well underway, as is research to measure the effect of such testimony on audiences. For decades, mental health organizations have featured speakers with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. But until now, suicide has been virtually taboo, because of not only shame and stigma, but also fears that talking about the act could give others ideas about how to do it.

There is no doubt that fellowship and community have been established to provide comfort to many people with mental health issues. Although such fellowships are only moderately successful with compulsive acts like addiction, they may prove more successful for disorders like depression, which are often marked by a pervasive sense of isolation.

If you are someone you know is struggling with feelings of despair, PPSC offers depression therapy that may help to lift the heavy burden of chronic emotional pain. Call us today to learn more.

Depression in Young Athletes

An interesting recent article in The Atlantic highlights what has become something of an invisible epidemic: depression among elite college athletes. National trends point to declining mental health among undergraduates across the board:

[T]he American College Health Association reported in 2013 that 31.3 percent of undergraduates surveyed felt “so depressed it was difficult to function,” and 7.4 percent admitted to seriously considering suicide.

Athletes are no different, of course. The article captures the dichotomy of what has become, for many young athletes, an unresolvable conflict between maintaining a warrior façade and crumbling within:

“I dreaded waking up. My body would ache. I felt physically sick,” he said. “It was very hard, as a man playing D1 football, to go to somebody and say ‘I’m having a hard time’,” Meldrum said. He marvels at his ability to have made it to practice every day while feeling so desperate. “Here I am, I’m feeling sick, I wished I would die, and I have to go out there and hit people.”

Depression is surprisingly easy to hide for some people, and college is the typical age that most clinical cases first arise. It is no wonder that college hides so many depressive students, both athletes and nonathletes alike. If you know someone struggling with clinical depression, it is essential to seek help.

We offer depression therapy that focuses on the origins and emotional factors behind this debilitating condition. Please reach out today to learn more.

When Depression Has Two Victims

A thoughtful new article in Scientific American addresses the many ways that depression can harm couples, upending the notion that depression is a solitary disorder. The article describes a number of shared repercussions that can follow from feelings of hopelessness and despair, tracing a vicious cycle:

A resounding body of research has shown how closely depression is related to relationships in a cyclical fashion: depression affects the quality of your relationships, and the features of your relationship can affect your level of depression. In other words, being depressed can cause you to pay less attention to your partner, be less involved, be more irritable or have trouble enjoying time together—all of which can cause your relationship to falter.

It’s worth reading the full piece for its taxonomy of depression-related problems that strike couples, including diminished sex drive, hopelessness about the relationship, a tendency to “act out,” and pervasive anxiety.

If you believe your relationship has suffered because of depression, it may be time to seek substantive analytic therapy. PPSC is one of the world’s foremost institutions for the study and treatment of depression, and we offer a number of extensive resources for those interested in excellent relationship therapy.

Click to start your search for a therapist in New York today.

The Connection Between Insomnia, Depression and Talk Therapy

Several outlets reported this week that a new small NIH-funded study has affirmed an earlier finding that talk therapy could be an unexpectedly effective cure for insomnia – and that curing insomnia could relieve the symptoms of depression. Here’s the New York Times:

Curing insomnia in people with depression could double their chance of a full recovery, scientists are reporting. The findings, based on an insomnia treatment that uses talk therapy rather than drugs, are the first to emerge from a series of closely watched studies of sleep and depression to be released in the coming year.

Although most researchers and clinical psychologists have long considered insomnia a symptom of depression, it turns out that the causality may flow both ways:

Several studies now suggest that developing insomnia doubles a person’s risk of later becoming depressed — the sleep problem preceding the mood disorder, rather than the other way around.

It is an encouraging finding for the field of therapy for depression, and yet more evidence that talk therapy can give rise to deep-seated changes which cannot always be matched by drugs. The study in question focused on a form of cognitive therapy known as CDT-I (“I” for insomnia), but no study has yet been undertaken that compares this type of therapy to another modality such as analytic therapy. Either way, the tidal wave of new evidence underscoring the timeless power of dialogue continues to color national conversations on mental health.