Coalition for Psychotherapy Parity Seeks Members to Advocate for Mental Health Care

The Coalition for Psychotherapy Parity, which advocates for parity in psychotherapy treatment, without arbitrary limits imposed by insurance companies, encourages mental health advocates and clinicians to join as members and endorse its clinical necessity guidelines for psychotherapy.

Prominent members include The Kennedy Forum; the University of Southern California’s Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics; the American Psychoanalytic Association; and the Austen Riggs Center. Founding members include Psych-Appeal’s Meiram Bendat.

The Coalition deems that most patients seeking mental health care have chronic, recurring symptoms that require ongoing availability of treatment. Clinical experience and extensive research have shown that when psychotherapy is provided as needed, it is not only effective, but cost-effective as well, leading to significant “cost-offset” savings in overall medical expenses, disability, morbidity, and mortality.

However, despite this evidence—and legal requirements under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA)—insurance companies focus on acute care and continue to resist authorizing more than brief courses of treatment. To circumvent the law, they rely on inaccurate proprietary clinical standards and utilization review procedures that block access to ongoing care.

This is not parity.

There are standards for reimbursement of other medical conditions, including that effective courses of treatment be continued until meaningful recovery is achieved. It is the Coalition’s position that this must also be the standard for mental health care.

We invite you to join the Coalition for Psychotherapy Parity and show your support by endorsing its clinical guideline position paper on psychotherapy and mental health parity. For more information, visit www.coalitionforpsychotherapyparity.org.

Thank you.