Submitted by Richard Shulman PhD.
W. Hartford, CT (December 11, 2020) – While the demand for truly confidential counseling services grows, central Connecticut’s grassroots nonprofit service, Volunteers in Psychotherapy (VIP) has been awarded a third annual grant from the Nathaniel B. Field Memorial Foundation, whose mission is to prevent suicide through public awareness and education, to reduce stigma, and to provide hope and support to people [NathanielField.org]. In 21 years of service, VIP has given over 695 individuals and families access to strictly private therapy, with no intrusions or oversight by managed care.
VIP clients pay no fees. Instead people earn their therapy by doing independent volunteer work elsewhere, privately, for the charity or government agency of their choice — at a hospital, public school, veterans or nursing home, shelter, soup kitchen or many other types of public and charitable programs. VIP makes therapy available to everyone, without regard to their ability to pay, or possession of health insurance. VIP functions outside the often problematic involvement of managed care, while also avoiding the loss of privacy and client-control experienced at many public clinics and private practices. Insurers may require therapists to submit reports of personal information that violate the privacy of therapy talks, and therapists must provide problematic psychiatric labels which become part of people’s permanent medical records.
Everyone is welcome to participate in VIP: people who can’t afford to pay, who are unemployed or uninsured, who are dissatisfied with their insurance coverage or its lack of privacy, or who worry about reports about their therapy being available to their insurers or employers, or being documented in permanent medical records. VIP has had participating licensed psychologists, psychiatrists or other licensed psychotherapists who work out of their own offices. VIP is an IRS-approved tax-exempt charitable organization, supported by many local donors and grants.
At a time when sexual victimization and national health policy is being discussed openly, VIP’s innovative and strictly private charitable approach to provision of therapy celebrates its 20th Anniversary of successful service in Hartford.
“The need for this approach is enormous,” said Bertram Karon, PhD, past President of the American Psychological Association Division of Psychoanalysis, who co-chaired a symposium on VIP at an APA National Convention. “Patients need absolute confidence in knowing what they say will be kept private.”
“People who need psychotherapy are our friends and our families… they’re not people other than us,” said Maureen Lee, MS, RN a specialist and educator in Community Health Nursing who is also on the Board of Directors of the McPhee Foundation, one of many ongoing financial supporters of VIP. “VIP enhances the health and well-being of people in our community; partnering with them while also providing them with confidentiality. That’s what impressed our foundation.”
“VIP protects people’s privacy and lets them determine whether continued therapy is of value to them, instead of leaving that decision to insurers or public clinics – who can benefit financially by not providing therapy. VIP’s system encourages voluntarism that benefits the community by requiring our therapy clients to independently and privately provide ongoing volunteer work to the charity of their choice in order to receive our services.” said Dr. Richard Shulman, Licensed Psychologist and Director of VIP. “Many therapists are uncomfortable with all the compromises they must make in dealing with managed care systems. They recognize that sending required reports on the private lives of their clients breaches the privacy people need in order to speak openly in therapy. Even the Supreme Court recognized the need for strict privacy in a recent ruling about psychotherapy.”
Everyone involved with VIP is asked to contribute to the common good. VIP’s licensed psychotherapists work for less than half the average local private practice fee. VIP is supported both by private individuals who make tax-deductible charitable donations, as well as by grants from businesses, religious congregations, and philanthropic foundations. The organization also welcomes potential new therapists, and others who want to volunteer in support of VIP’s program, even on VIP’s Board of Directors. The pandemic has not slowed VIP’s provision of service – now through phone & video.
A five minute CBS news interview about VIP is viewable through VIP’s website. VIP has been featured in the New York Times, Psychology Today, The American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology, National Public Radio and the Hartford Courant. VIP also received the Award for Distinguished Psychological Contribution in the Public Interest from the Connecticut Psychological Association and the 2003 award of the American Institute of Medical Education.
For more information, people can call Dr. Shulman at Volunteers In Psychotherapy in West Hartford: (860) 233-5115. A 24 hour taped information line describing VIP is also available at that number. VIP’s website is WWW.CTVIP.ORG
