Therapy or coaching: which one is this?

Therapy is licensed health care. It is regulated, it is tied to a specific state, and it carries obligations that a licensing board enforces. Coaching is none of those things. This page is general information about the difference, not legal advice. Using one word for the other would be inaccurate, and in a licensed profession that kind of inaccuracy has consequences for the person receiving the service.

Individual psychotherapy with Melanie Van Orden, LCSW. Sessions run 50 minutes, usually weekly, delivered by telehealth, at $235 each. She is out-of-network with all insurance plans and provides a monthly superbill. You need to be physically located in New York State at the time of each session, because New York is where she is licensed.

Coaching is one-to-one and runs across three months: twelve 50-minute video sessions plus one 6-hour intensive. It is offered more widely than New York State. The price is discussed on an introductory call rather than posted. It sits apart from the therapy practice.

Coaching is not therapy and it is not licensed mental-health treatment. If what you need is clinical care, coaching is not a smaller version of it and not a way around living in another state. That line protects you more than it protects anyone else.

If what you want help with is something you would want a licensed clinician to treat, you are looking for therapy, and therapy here means New York State. If you live elsewhere, therapy with Melanie is not available to you, and that is set by licensure rather than by preference. Coaching is a different engagement with a different structure and a different set of limits. When you are unsure which one you want, the introductory conversation is the place to sort that out.