I know exactly how insurances work. Since Lou is a psychiatrist, (my recollection is that Linda is not a psychiatrist with a medical degree from a medical school), they do have the ability to use their talents in an in patient environment that insurances would accept.
I agree with you, no insurance will pay for more than 3 hours a week of out patient therapy and their program is an intensive all day program. At the end of the day, the client must go to a hotel. This is also something that I am curious about.
In a hospital setting, you may only get 3 individual hours of therapy, but the insurance pay enormous amounts to take your temp and bp on a psych ward, while doing nothing to help the patient get better. Since Lou is a psychiatrist, he would qualify under a hospital setting, making it more available for people. For it to be a hospital, certain criteria must be met. Charge $100 for meals a day, and $350 for the room, and recoup the cost of therapy. That is all I am saying about the treatment not being available for most. If it helps, $133 an hour is very reasonable.
If I did not think their services were valuable, I would not have gone back every year and gave several hundred dollars for trainings. in addition to staying in hotels. The results that I saw were not therapy done with Lou and Linda, (I never met any of their clients) it was therapy provided by someone they trained that I worked under. While I was in grad school, this therapist introduced me to this training, then invited me to work with him in all day intensive sessions. I spent hundreds of hours working with him. However, it turned out that he was very unethical, and soon I discovered that he planted false memories and kept clients returning for years.
At times, he would attempt to do this to me as well, making suggestions that I flinched and such. I spent hundreds of hours with this man-yep, we ended up in a 2 yr relationship, during which time, he drugged and raped me repeatedly. Every time I stayed at his house, I had hours of lost time during the night, followed by UTI infections, irregular bleeding, and then my gynecologist did a an endo-cervical biopsy because my cervix was so messed up upon exam. When I later got the balls to asked how it would differ from repeated rape-she said it wouldn't. At the same time of discovering the rape that I did not remember, I began having a stalker. Yep, it was my boyfriend therapist. Remains of dead animals in my yard, vandalism, letters addressed to me that were vulgar, left on my car, etc. He got caught. He put an ex girlfriend up to making calls to threaten my childrens lives, she was prosecuted.
All the while this is going on, he is offering to stay at my house so that I feel safe. Things unraveled and last I heard he was being accused of being a pedophile-by his own account. I was a rookie, he had 25 yrs experience. He was quite older as well. I was conned. This has nothing to do with the trauma center that you are talking about, it is not their fault. However, there is no oversight or regulations when insurance is not accepted-that is my only point and fear. The reality is, one sociopath trained under them and carried it into his own practice. I was not his only victim. He was having sexual relatioships with patients in his office. He always kept a smart attractive wife or girlfriend on his arm, so who would believe that he assaulted unattractive women that he did.
He took one of my relatives as a client. That client died last year from a drug overdose. This therapist instilled memories that were false, diagnosed him with ptsd and told him to smoke weed for it and use other illegal substances. This man was 38 yrs old and left two teenagers. This treatment was the death of him. He never recovered after this therapy.
Others in the community are aware and that is likely why many are skeptics. There is no oversight. Most private practioners take insurances. This man could not take insurance-they cut him off because of former lawsuits for abusing clients. This was prior to my knowing him evidently. He was resourceful and found training that would require cash pay, and bled money out of people while abusing them. Further, he broke confidentiality at every opportunity. I live one hour away from this Lou and Linda, and I bet if you asked, they would be familiar with this man. It is not their fault. I just think it would be better to provide it in a way that protects the public and allows for it to be more mainstreamed and available. Everyone is not ethical.
On a more positive note, I am glad to hear that it benefitted you and that you had the opportunity to do this therapy. I admit that I was very impressed with their model of trauma therapy and am very sincere about purchasing his book.
I am aslo first to criticize how insurances work and our current mental health system-they dont work for many.
