When I first started working for Counseling Services of Greenville (early 2016), it was expected that I would accept insurance. As I continued to work here, more and more clients needed me to accept their insurance in order to afford mental health support. While it might have been easy to point them to other providers, for many, there were reasons why connecting with another provider would not happen. As you probably know, taking the first step to access mental healthcare is already a leap. The stigma around having a “mental illness” or a problem of any kind, remains high, especially here in the South. Taking time off work or getting a sitter for the kids, finding safe and reliable transportation, or even getting a provider to call you back to make an appointment (which is probably 6-8 weeks out due to the high volume of need) make accessing care incredibly difficult.

You are not alone in this struggle. According to Mental Health America, in a 2023 study approximately 21% of Americans (approximately 50 million people) are experiencing some level of mental illness, and of those 50 million people identifying a mental illness, 55% of them have not received treatment. This data was primarily taken from 2020, and we know that COVID-19 and the effects on our daily lives imbued most of us with higher levels of anxiety and isolation.

This is why accessibility remains a top priority for Counseling Services of Greenville. When I took over the practice in early 2021, it was clear to me that accessibility was more important than ever. Most of the providers here accept a wide array of insurance options as many people are not able to afford counseling out of pocket.

Accepting insurance is not the only way that we work to be accessible. According to Mental Health America’s Access to Care study in 2022, roughly 5.5 million people who have a mental illness are uninsured. This means that they have to cover the entire cost of mental health appointments without support, typically at a time when finances are already stretched. This is why we strive to keep our self-pay rate around the same rate as our insurance clients pay.

This might sound surprising, but even if you have insurance and we accept it, you may still be paying your insurance’s full rate until you meet your deductible. Let’s say you have a BCBS plan and you have a $1000 deductible. BCBS has a contract with us to pay us $100 per session. You will have to pay $100 for every session until that deductible is met, and then it often drops down to 20% of the cost of the claim (in this case, $20).

Many “self-pay only” therapists in the area charge well over this rate. While we highly value our therapists here, we work to balance this with the needs of our clients, and choose to keep our self-pay rate similar to what someone with insurance would pay out of pocket prior to meeting their deductible. In short, we are not interested in penalizing a person for not having insurance coverage.

Finally, according to the Bureau of Health Workforce, South Carolina has enough psychiatrists for 33% of the population. Although this statistic does not cover other mental healthcare workers, we know that there are many areas here where accessing quality healthcare is not easy in more rural areas. We offer telehealth and have offered it since late March, 2020, and have invested in quality systems to make telehealth both easy and secure for our clients. All of our providers can offer telehealth along with in-office sessions, or a combination of both.

Receiving mental healthcare is not easy. To connect with a therapist, each of our clients faces social stigma, possible judgment, internal shame, external financial pressures, and the logistical difficulty of finding an hour to take out of our very busy lives. On the other hand, what you can expect from Counseling Services of Greenville is a small, local group who will more than likely accept your insurance, have hours that will work for you, is centrally located, and fully committed to helping you heal from your past, learn new skills, and unlock your potential.