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Contact & Crisis Policies

Updated May 2024

CALLING, TEXTING & EMAILING
Clinicians will provide you their contact information and are available via phone, text and email for thefollowing situations:

  1. Scheduling
    1. Cancellation, rescheduling, being late to an appointment, needing the link for telehealth
  2. Requests for paperwork
    1. FMLA, Diagnosis letters, et
  3. Emergencies
    1. if you think you may need to get a higher level of care from the Emergency Room, EmergencyServices, Police, etc. and/or need to speak to your therapist in the next 24hrs or you will have to goto the ER).
    2. Letting your therapist know you have gone to the ER or Emergency Services, and/or you are beinghospitalized or discharged. The clinician can potentially be available to talk to the emergencytreatment team if needed/consented to as appropriate.

Keep in mind that these modes are NOT HIPAA protected, so please leave your information at your ownrisk/consent. We do offer secure, HIPAA compliant messaging through Simple Practice.

Also, your clinician will try to respond in 8-12 hours but that cannot be guaranteed. If it is an emergencythat requires immediate attention or cannot wait 12 hours, please call 911 and/or go to your localemergency room/emergency services to ask for a mental health assessment.

Your clinician will not do any therapy or processing outside of session or over text or email. They will alsonot engage in any socializing, as well. If you are wanting to send updates, etc. between sessions to yourclinician, you will need to explicitly discuss this with them and both agree on it. Out of respect for ourclinicians work life balance, if your clinician agrees to these updates, they will wait until the start of yourpaid session time to read it. Otherwise, phone/text/email outside of session should be kept to what isoutlined above.

If you are texting or emailing your clinician about therapy related things, we will only assess safety todetermine if we need to have a video session with you to explore the need for a higher level of care or safety plan. If you are reaching out to your clinician in time of a crisis, the clinician will talk to you to assessif you need a higher level of care or a safety plan. Either way, it will be a billed session (in increments of 15min). See Crisis Protocol below for further details.

CRISIS PROTOCOL

  1. You can reach out to your clinician in an emergency, as defined below:
    1. You are in active danger or threat of harm
    2. You are actively planning to hurt yourself or other people
    3. You’re having active hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, etc. that are putting you at risk
    4. You are not able to take care of yourself (not eating/drinking for days, not taking medication asprescribed and creating risk/harm, etc.)
    5. When in doubt- you can reach out and ask but the clinician will assess the situation to offer nextsteps as outlined below
  2. When you reach out it will be to either:
    1. to see if you need a higher level of care (Emergency Services, ER, Police, Hospitalization, IOP, etc)
    2. Create a safety plan with your clinician.
    3. OR to request an extra session if you feel like it will help process the event to avoid a higher levelof care. Clinicians will do their best to offer their next available times, but this cannot beguaranteed that it will be the same or next day.

When in doubt, if your clinician does not respond immediately or in an emergency, contact 911 and/or goto your local emergency room/emergency services and ask for a mental health assessment.

ADDITIONAL NUMBERS TO CALL

If you need to contact emergency services the numbers are as follows: