It’s true: most of us already offer lower fees to certain clients. However, when we offer lower fees to clients we are acting as lone altruistic individuals. By becoming an Open Path Member Clinician you put your altruism to work, becoming part of a nationwide movement of clinicians dedicated to ending economic disparity in the mental health field. Also, it’s our intent to make Open Path a place of support for clinicians offering low-fee therapy: in addition to your profile page bringing increased traffic to your website, we offer discounts on CEUs, and other benefits listed here.

Start the application process here. An Open Path staff member will review your application and look up your license by the close of the following business day. If we can’t find your license information or you are a postgraduate intern, pre-licensed professional, an associate, or a student intern, we will follow up with you via email.

You must be a licensed or provisionally licensed (Pre-Licensed/License Eligible) mental health clinician with a graduate degree in psychotherapy, counseling, or a related field from an accredited institution. You must also pass our peer-reviewed online application process.

We also accept student interns who can offer $30 sessions to Open Path clients. In that case, you must be completing your practicum or clinical internship to obtain your master’s degree. You will be required to provide a copy of your current, unofficial transcripts and your signed supervision contract for your internship.

In all cases, you must be willing to reserve at least 1 slot in your caseload for a lower-fee client through Open Path.

Yes, we welcome therapists in Canada to join Open Path. In order to participate, you will need to be a Registered Social Worker, Registered Psychologist, or Registered Psychotherapist and meet the following criteria:

1. You must provide documentation of your postgraduate degree in psychotherapy, counseling, or a related field from an accredited institution.

2. You will need to provide documentation showing that you are registered with your provincial college.*

* If you are a psychotherapist and applying from one of the 4 regulated provinces (Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia) you must be able to show that you are a Registered Psychotherapist with your provincial college.

If you are applying from one of the other 9, unregulated provinces, you must provide proof of your postgraduate degree in a psychology-related field and registration with any provincial associations.

We look forward to reviewing your application.

Yes, it is possible to have a profile on our site for a clinic or group practice. However, we recommend having therapists from the clinic use individual profiles on our site for two reasons:

1. It provides a greater SEO push for your clinic.

2. We’ve learned that people are far more likely to click on a face, than a company logo. The individual clinician can link to your main website from their profile.

If you would like to go with having the clinic posted only, we would need an application from the point person (who would receive all of the emails coming from Open Path staff and prospective clients).

After you submit the application, please email the names of the therapists in your practice that plan to see Open Path clients to therapists@openpathcollective.org. We will verify their license.

If there are interns at the clinic, we can accept them into Open Path as long as they already hold their postgraduate degree in counseling, psychology, or related field. Postgraduate interns can submit their supervisors’ name if they do not hold their own license.

*Please Note: For a group profile, all participating therapists must have completed a master’s degree in a psychotherapy-related field and be licensed, provisionally licensed, or pre-licensed. Student interns cannot be included in group profiles, all student interns must have individual profiles.

If you would like to create profiles for each therapist, which we recommend, each therapist would need to fill out the application in order to create their profile.

The application can be found here.

After applying and being approved to be an Open Path Member Clinician, your profile will be posted on our site and visible to clients. You can login to your Account Dashboard at any time to make updates to your profile. Clients will be able to reach out to you and choose you as their preferred therapist if you’re currently accepting new clients.

We simply use it for our own records: Open Path will never share or sell your information. Our only goal is to connect you with people who can’t afford therapy while supporting your practice in the process.

Absolutely nothing! Part of our mission is to support you in your therapy or counseling practice by providing you a free platform to offer affordable therapy. As Open Path grows and our visibility increases, your visibility will increase too. It’s our belief that your involvement with Open Path will have a positive impact for your full-fee practice as well, driving new web traffic to your practice’s homepage. Also, we’re committed to supporting your practice in other ways. You can learn more about the benefits of being an Open Path Member Clinician here.

A: The Open Path sliding scale rates of $40-$70 per session for individuals and $40-$80 for couples and family are based on a standard, 50-minute session. If a session will be longer than 50 minutes, you can prorate the session fee. For example, you could charge $126 for a 90-minute intake session. You may not offer sessions that are shorter than the standard, 50-minute session.

If you have any further questions regarding setting the fee, please email Open Path at info@openpathcollective.org.

No, we do not allow member therapists to raise the rate after a certain number of sessions to an amount over $70. We ask that you see Open Path clients within the range of $40-70 per session ($40-80 for couples and family counseling).

If maintaining the Open Path rate over a longer period of time feels challenging for your practice, we encourage you to think carefully about the number of Open Path clients you can take on. We only ask member therapists to work with a minimum of one client, as we understand the financial impact of implementing a sliding scale. We’ve noticed that therapists who work with fewer Open Path clients over a longer period of time results in a more positive experience for both the therapist and client.

Yes, if a client’s financial situation significantly improves, it is acceptable to renegotiate their fee. For example, if the client is paying $40 a session and a therapist’s rate is $125 and the client suddenly gets a high paying job, we believe it’s financially and therapeutically appropriate and important to change the fee. The therapist would be encouraged to respectfully renegotiate the rate with the client at that time. If the client has any questions about their membership with Open Path at that point, the therapist can direct them to Open Path at info@openpathcollective.org.

Open Path is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. We use the funds we receive from the membership fee to market Open Path to clients, maintain our website, offer our staff a living wage, pursue grants and other avenues of funding, and attract therapists to the collective. You can read more about our membership fee here.

Open Path member therapists are allowed to charge up to $80 for couples counseling and/or family therapy sessions. If you plan to charge greater than $70 for this kind of session, we recommend that you share that information on your Open Path profile so that clients know what to expect.

Open Path serves clients in financial need who are seeking affordable therapy. Open Path clients cannot afford market rates for therapy, are uninsured or underinsured, and have an annual household income below $100,000.

By underinsured, we are referring to people who have health insurance that does not include affordable in-network mental health benefits. This could be due to a high deductible and/or a copay higher than $70 per session for individual therapy (or higher than $80 per session for couples or family therapy). Learn more.

Yes. As long as your profile page indicates that you are accepting new Open Path clients, clients can contact you through your profile and/or select you as their chosen therapist. Please note that Open Path does not match clients with therapists.

Just one. We recognize that your participation with Open Path means that you have agreed to significantly reduce your session fee for Open Path clients. Because of this, we do not expect any therapists to fill their caseload with Open Path clients. We have found that for many of our member therapists, working with 2-5 Open Path clients is sustainable for their practice, but ultimately you make the decision of what works best for your practice.

Yes. Your client(s) would need to fill out our application and pay our one-time $65 membership fee.

Open Path strengthens your digital presence and fields queries from potential clients who discover Open Path in their own web search or via word of mouth. We also support therapists who wish to conduct outreach to gain additional referrals. If there are organizations in your community you’d like to contact, please let us know by emailing info@openpathcollective.org and we can provide you with the needed materials and information.

Thanks to a generous grant from Google, we direct marketing resources toward targeted ads designed to increase the number of referrals throughout the country. After that, it’s up to clients to decide which therapist they wish to work with.

Yes, with a caveat. After signing up for Open Path, you may indicate on your profile page that you are not currently accepting Open Path clients. We do ask that within six months time, you change this status on your page to make room for at least one Open Path client in your caseload.

Of course. We hope that Open Path will help alleviate the burden of saying no to certain clients. While we can’t promise there will be a therapist available to work with them, we welcome the referral and will do our best to help them find an affordable clinician.

If there are no available Medicaid providers in the client’s area, a client could use Open Path to meet their need for affordable mental health care. It’s important to note that Open Path rates are much higher than Medicaid rates for psychotherapy. If there are available Medicaid providers in the client’s area, we ask that they not use Open Path.

No. You will be able to indicate whether or not you are accepting Open Path clients on your profile page. This page is always in your control.

This is between you and your client. However, we expect that all Open Path clients have access to one-on-one sessions with their therapist if they prefer it.

Open Path allows its member therapists to offer online therapy. We strongly encourage all therapists offering online therapy to research the guidelines or policies of their state’s licensing board as well as of their medical liability insurance policy. Some therapists may only be able to offer remote counseling to clients located in the same state as where they are licensed. We also highly recommend that therapists conduct an initial assessment with new clients requesting online therapy to determine the appropriateness of this approach before regular sessions are undertaken.