The Arroyos Treatment Centers Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve put together answers to some commonly asked questions to quickly provide you with information about The Arroyos and the services that we offer. If you have a question that you can’t find the answer to here, please use the contact us page.
There are a few basic guidelines when deciding how often to see your therapist. As a general rule, you should see your therapist at least once a week when you are actively involved in psychotherapy. If your problems are more severe or acute, or if you are doing psychoanalytic psychotherapy, it may be appropriate to have sessions two or three times a week or more. On the other hand, if therapy has been helpful and you want to maintain the gains that you have achieved, every other week or once a month maybe just right.
Yes. All new patients at The Arroyos begin by completing our Intake Assessment and Evaluation. We value the work that you have done with your other mental health practitioners, and we have a specific process of gathering information on you to help understand your concerns and priorities. Completing our intake procedure allows us to get to know one another and work together to create a personalized treatment plan that fits your specific needs and goals.
Group therapy is best seen as augmenting the more foundational work that is accomplished in individual therapy. For this reason, we do require all patients who are participating in group therapy to have an individual therapist. In this way, group therapy does not become a substitute for individual therapy. If you would like to attend a group at The Arroyos and you want to stay with the individual therapist that you are currently seeing, please let the intake staff know this at the time you contact us. With your permission, we will reach out to them and discuss this treatment option with them. Sometimes we do work with therapists in the community while they are continuing to provide individual therapy while The Arroyos offers group therapy.
Yes, probably. Psychotherapy is effective for all of the conditions that we treat at The Arroyos. Often, but not always, adding medication to psychotherapy will result in the best outcomes. There are some conditions where medications do not provide any additional benefit to treatment, and we do not recommend adding medications to your treatment plan. There are other conditions where medications are so critical to effective treatment that we do not feel that we responsibly provide ongoing outpatient psychological treatment if the patient is not on medication. In these situations, we will give you the option of admitting and treating you at a higher level of care such as a hospital, or transferring your care to a therapist outside of The Arroyos who may view your case differently.
Yes, probably. Medications are effective for many psychological disorders that we treat at The Arroyos. Often a patient wants to continue on maintenance medications after they have successfully completed a course of psychotherapy with medications at The Arroyos. This treatment plan is usually workable as long as the patient is willing to go back into psychotherapy at The Arroyos if they and their psychiatrist feel that this would be beneficial. The Arroyos Clinical Director, a clinical psychologist, also coordinates the treatment plans “medication only” patients with the staff psychiatrist to ensure that the highest quality standards are continuously being met for our patients throughout each patient’s professional care with us.
No. The Arroyos Treatment Center provides primary psychological care integrated with psychiatric care. We do not offer standalone psychiatric care to patients who are receiving mental health services from other practitioners.
Patients who like their individual therapist often ask if they can also be their marriage or family therapist. Most often, this is not a good idea, with a few exceptions. When a psychologist treats a couple or a family, they usually think of the relationship as the primary focus of treatment, not the individual parties. They cannot be in a position of taking sides or biased toward one party. If an individual therapist is also a couples therapist, the perception of bias exists, even if the therapist believes that they can maintain a neutral stance. On occasion, an individual therapist may include a family member in their patient’s session, but this is usually for purposes of gathering information, psychoeducation, or treatment planning. The same is true of family therapy, with one exception. Family Focused Therapy (FFT), a particular type of family therapy for serious psychological disorders, is often conducted by the patient’s individual therapists, with or without a co-therapist. FFT is a type of family therapy that is very focused on the patient’s illness and helping the family learn to support the patient and respond more effectively to the patient’s condition. For this reason, the sessions are, in fact, biased toward the patient and their condition, and the requirement for the therapist to be a neutral party is not so essential to the process.
Our therapists do offer certain types of short-term, or brief, psychotherapy. These types of therapy are not for everyone, and patients need to meet specific criteria to be accepted for brief psychotherapy. When you see a psychologist for brief psychotherapy, you agree at the beginning of therapy that the therapist will only see you for a set number of sessions (typically 16-20) over a limited time (typically no more than six months). The therapy will terminate after the maximum number of sessions has been reached and/or if the time limit has expired. While brief therapy is quite successful with the right patient, additional treatment is sometimes appropriate when brief therapy concluded. In this case, we will develop a new treatment plan with you for traditional, open-ended individual psychotherapy, or we can refer you to a therapist outside of our practice.
The Arroyos is an out-of-network treatment provider, meaning that we are not contracted with any insurance companies. This means that you pay us directly at the time professional services are rendered, and we provide you with a superbill that you submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. Most PPO plans will reimburse for professional services provided by licensed psychologists and psychiatrists. Each PPO plan is different, and it is a good idea to contact your provider for more information on what type of reimbursement you can expect. We do not accept Medicare, MediCal, or Medicaid.