the Price of Child Psychologty

I recently started taking my teenage daughter to therapy sessions because of depression symptoms. I know a lot of it is pretty normal teenager stuff, but I grew concerned because she's become withdrawn and doesn't really talk to me about what's bothering her anymore. I was surprised to learn how expensive it is. A 30-50 minute session costs $130. They have a sliding fee scale based on income, but since we're more than 200% above the poverty level, we don't qualify. We do have insurance, so we only have to cover 50% and our insurance pays the other 50%.

We also get a "network discount" which lowers the total cost to $90, so I pay $45. Still, after taking 2 hours off work (required to drive my daughter there and back home, then the time for my regulary commute) and the $10 in gas it costs me round trip for each visit, these "weekly" sessions are getting pretty old.

She's been in therapy for about 3 months now, and I guess it's helping. I'm not really sure since I usually sit in the lobby and wait and my daughter doesn't share what was discussed with me. I've just recently been invited in the meeting (for the past 2 sessions) and it's like having a regular conversation with my daughter, except there's a mediator (and oh yeah, I have to pay a significant amount of money for that.)

If your child needs therapy, you should spend the first session talking to the therapist about what you hope to get out of it. For example, my daughter is very good at changing the subject and directing the focus to things other people are doing and off of herself. She's also good at reading what you want and telling you just enough to make you think she's opening up, but really only giving you the tip of the iceberg. I really think therapy sessions would be more productive if they lasted 2 or 3 hours per visit. With only 45 minutes or so of conversation, it's easy for my daughter to redirect the conversation so she doesn't have to get to the heart of any particular problem. And when you walk away from it for a week or two, you have to spend the first 10-15 minutes just getting back to where you left off. I really think it would work better if the sessions were longer.