Procedure

Important: Unfortunately, we cannot offer long-term psychotherapy treatment in all cases. One of the reasons for this circumstance is the legal mandate, our Psychotherapeutic University Ambulance holds. The legal mandate of the Ambulance involves that the focus of the Ambulance must not exclusively be on long-term psychotherapy treatment, but instead has to cover psychotherapeutic consultation opportunities and psychological diagnostics, to a large extent. This is why the Psychotherapeutic University Ambulance offers long-term psychotherapy treatment in addition to consultations, that is limited to a few numbers of appointments (e.g. for the purpose of thorough psychological diagnostics), also in many cases, where there is the desire for long-term psychotherapy treatment. In these cases, the appointments can be used to obtain detailed diagnostic assessments of the problem and recommendations for alternative treatment options. In very many cases, such short-term treatments turn out to be helpful and have been proven to be effective. Whether long-term psychotherapy is possible (if desired) will be communicated to you as early as possible (usually during the first session). The Care Center tries to offer as many treatments as possible. We ask for your understanding if this is not possible in all cases. In every case, we will discuss alternative treatment options during the consultation sessions.

Making an appointment

To make an appointment for an initial consultation (psychotherapeutic consultation), please contact us during the telephone consultation. During the telephone consultation, we will ask you about your concern, and asses your psychological symptoms during a brief conversation. Any personal data collected will be stored for a maximum of 3 months in strict alignment with data protection guidelines, and exclusively for the purpose to assign you to one of our psychotherapists.

If desired, and in case capacity is currently available, an appointment for an initial consultation will usually be scheduled immediately during the telephone consultation. This initial telephone consultation is conducted by specially trained staff members. We ask for your understanding that for personnel reasons we cannot guarantee that we will be able to answer every call during the telephone consultation hours. We kindly ask you to make an appointment for an initial consultation only during office hours. Outside the office hours, appointments cannot be scheduled. Furthermore, we ask you, not to send any emails for inquiries for initial consultations, since we cannot answer to these emails for the reasons of data protection laws.

First consultation and psychotherapeutic consultation hours

If you are visiting the Psychotherapeutic Ambulance of the University of Siegen for the first time, please register in the secretary's office. Bring your health insurance card with you. A referral from your family doctor is not necessary. Please arrive on time for your scheduled appointment. The first appointment takes about 50 minutes. Please allow about 15-20 additional minutes for completing paper work.

During the Psychotherapeutic Consultation Hour (up to three individual sessions of 50 minutes each), diagnosistics and individual treatment recommendations will be made.
If you already receive treament, you are welcome to obtain a second opinion from the therapists of the Psychotherapeutic Ambulance during the consultation.
If we can offer you a suitable treatment at the Psychotherapeutic Ambulance of the University of Siegen, you will be put on our waiting list. Else, we will give you advise for alternative treatment options. You will be informed as early as possible whether psychotherapy or only consultation hours will be possible. Please understand that our resources for offering long-term psychotherapy ist restricted, and cannot be offerend in every case.

Probatoric sessions

Following the psychotherapeutic consultation hours, up to four individual sessions of 50 minutes each take place within the framework of the probatory sessions ("trial sessions"). In these individual sessions the patient and the therapist get to know each other better and develop a treatment plan together. In mutual agreement to carry out a therapy together, an application will be made to your statutory or private health insurance company or allowance to cover the costs. After approval of the application by the health insurance company, the actual therapy begins.

During the psychotherapeutic consultation hours and the trial sessions, you will have sufficient time to decide for or against psychotherapy or to take another trial session in another practice. The trial sessions therefore do not oblige you to carry out psychotherapy or to carry out psychotherapy in your practice.