Articles & guides
One decision per guide
Guides to the levels of mental health care, what each one involves, and how to pay for it. Sources are listed at the bottom of every guide.
Teletherapy vs. In-Person Mental Health Treatment: How to Choose
Video therapy can work about as well as in-person care for many outpatient needs, but format is the wrong first question. How to think about severity, safety, privacy, and insurance before choosing.
Read the guide →The Levels of Mental Health Care, Explained
Treatment runs on a continuum from an hour of therapy a week to 24-hour hospital care. The map of all five levels: what each one involves, when it fits, and how clinicians and insurers decide.
Read the guide →PHP vs. IOP: The Difference and How to Choose
PHP is a full treatment day, five days a week; IOP is a few structured sessions built around work or school. What a week in each looks like, who fits where, and what to ask before enrolling.
Read the guide →Residential Mental Health Treatment, Explained
Residential care is not the hospital, and it is not for everyone. Who belongs there, what weeks in a program actually look like, how insurance authorizes it, and how to tell a good program from an expensive one.
Read the guide →How to Choose a Mental Health Treatment Program
Most people pick a program first and work backward. Start with the level of care, check the state license yourself, find out whether the person on the phone works for the program or a referral service, then ask about therapy, cost, and discharge.
Read the guide →How to Pay for Mental Health Treatment
Parity law, prior authorization, network exceptions, and an appeal right that is easy to overlook: seeing the plan's own criteria. Plus Medicare, Medicaid, and what to ask when you are paying yourself.
Read the guide →Inpatient Psychiatric Hospitalization, Explained
Inpatient care is for safety and stabilization, measured in days. How admission works, what happens on the unit, what family can do under privacy law, and how to plan the step down to a day program or outpatient care before the risky first weeks.
Read the guide →What to Expect in Your First Week of a Mental Health Program
Day one is mostly questions and forms; the plan takes shape over the next few days. What intake asks, what to bring and ask about, how a day runs at each level, who is on the team, how privacy works for family, and when the level of care may change.
Read the guide →Not sure what level of care fits?
Our guided assessment walks through the questions a clinical intake would ask.
Try the assessment →