Search for professionals
Finding a mental health professional isn't hard. However, choosing the right one for you should be a multi-step selection process. You can get some good advice from sites like WebMD, National Alliance on Mental Illness, MayoClinic, and PsychCentral.com ). Even though they all say pretty much the same thing, their advice may not be very helpful. They suggest...
Ask your insurer and they give you a list. That's it. You're on your own. Start dialing.
Ask your doctor and you get one or two recommendations. They might be the only people your doctor knows and may not specialize in the problems for which you are seeking help.
Ask your trusted friend and you get one opinion about one person’s experience with one professional. Not much to go on.
With that limited information, you'd probably go on the internet looking to scrounge for further details as you try to investigate these few names. That's how inefficient this process has always been. At AgoraMHN, we think that you might want to get to know your options better before you make a choice.
We’ve got a better way.
The search
First, think hard about what kind of help you’re looking for...individual therapy, group therapy, marriage counseling, etc. If you’re like many, you may not be sure of what the problem is or how to go about treating it. In that case, what you really want is a thorough evaluation.
Be systematic according to your needs
You have two preliminary ways to begin this search: GUIDE ME, or browse on your own.
If you’re already an experienced user of mental health services, you might be comfortable to search on your own, beginning with the zip code where you would prefer to be seen. Otherwise, if you’re not so sure, you’ll save some time if you choose the "GUIDE ME" option.
The "GUIDE ME" option takes you through four (4) simple questions that narrow the field a bit according to certain requirements. At the end, you’ll be presented with a list of professionals who satisfy those requirements.
Save your search results after this or any other step in the search process so that you can refer back to this original list later. Register with your email address and a password to do this. (If you’re worried about privacy, the whole site is secured so that all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. (And, we will never give your information to any third parties.)
Filter down your list of suitable candidates. Your search results page allows you to filter the results according to many variables--eleven to be exact. Each time you use a filter, your list of professionals will decrease accordingly. Keep an eye on the orange number as you filter the list and aim to get down to about ten professionals. Depending on your criteria, you may find it hard to even find ten that meet them all, so you may want to undo some filters to get a larger group of professionals.
Filter based on most important factors first. Begin with the meaningful factors, the ones that truly matter to you. For example, is the gender of your therapist an important factor, or merely a preference? (Research shows that the gender of the therapist actually has little to do with treatment outcome and filtering your search based on this variable will likely cut your list in half.)
Don’t start with price. We want you to be price conscious, and at AgoraMHN we require a level of price transparency on the part of the member professionals. But, as the adage goes, "Price is what you pay, but value is what you get". You can always filter on price at a later point in time. If you are planning to use your insurance with a "contracted" provider, the price filter won't matter anyway. The fees are already determined by your insurer.
Filter based on preferences. Depending on the size of your search list, now you can filter based on additional factors that are less important. Save the resulting lists into your personal folder as well.