Expanding your mental health practice: Services beyond traditional therapy sessions

After establishing your own mental health practice, you may find yourself wondering what you can offer in addition to counseling. While therapy gives us many opportunities to help others, it can sometimes become repetitive. 

Fortunately, therapists have valuable knowledge and experience that can extend into different services. If you’re ready to further your professional development, diversify your work, and boost your income, consider these additional service offerings.

The primary motivation to add different ancillary services to your practice is to prevent burnout. A traditional therapy role means that you focus on your clients’ treatment and leave the administrative tasks to other staff members. As a practice owner, you must balance the dual roles of therapist and business owner. These identities can conflict with each other and leave you feeling exhausted at the end of your workdays.

A diverse schedule enables you to fill billable hours with individuals who aren’t looking for help with clinical symptoms. They might want your assistance with research projects, guidance from supervision, instruction within a presentation, and so on. This refreshing change of pace can bolster your business as you bring in new clients who appreciate your skillfulness in areas besides counseling.

Another advantage of service expansion is your continued professional development. Especially if you’ve marketed your business to a specific population, like individuals battling eating disorders or drug addictions, you risk plateauing your clinical finesse. Counselors’ sharp minds and intuitions can stagnate after we’ve completed hundreds of intakes, treatment plans, and therapy appointments.

By incorporating new services, you can advance your knowledge in new areas and test your limits. You can also develop your non-clinical skills, such as developing slide presentations, authoring journal articles, and building therapy tools.

Before I opened my business, I’d never given workplace trainings without a management team completing the preparatory work. I was excited during my first solo venture to help plan out the speaking event, including what type of microphone I’d use, how chairs and tables would be arranged, and what printouts would be needed for participants.

Updated offerings from your business can help you balance out or increase its cashflow. If you have income from non-clinical sources, such as continuing education trainings for fellow clinicians, a caseload fluctuation is less urgent. 

A pattern I’ve noted with therapy clients is their habit of lengthening the time in-between appointments when their deductibles reset in January. Likewise, I’ve observed that many parents stop booking sessions for their child or adolescent during June, July, and August, when school stressors are nonexistent. Your reliance on other financial streams can help your business avoid significant loss during times such as these.

When exploring potential add-on services for your practice, think about what you enjoy, whether there’s sufficient demand for it as a service, and how you could bill for it. Evaluate what stage you’re at as a professional and choose offerings that are realistic for your clinical experience.

For instance, if you recently received your independent license, it’s not reasonable for you to advertise supervision and consultation services. Here are several options to look into, ordered by the clinical maturity required:

Think back to the last time you attended a major mental health conference. You likely passed through a vendor hall of booths selling an array of therapy resources: emotions cards, sensory tables, play therapy toys, sand tray boxes and miniatures, etc.

A lot of these sellers are current or former practitioners who’ve developed products impressive enough for fellow clinicians to purchase. If you enjoy hands-on projects, like designing and building, use these talents to create items that can enhance therapy sessions.

Practitioner-researchers have led the way in the advancement of mental healthcare. Explore what federal, state, and local grants are available to you, and inquire about ways you can assist with research projects at university counseling departments. These avenues can provide a fixed income over several year timeframes and allow you to travel, meet new people, and share your research at large events.

You regularly teach your therapy clients about mental health, but they’re not the only audience who can appreciate your guidance. Your community’s health centers, academic institutions, and religious establishments are full of individuals who can benefit from information about mental health.

A solid 1- or 3-hour presentation can bring in significant profit when you market it to multiple sites over time. If you choose to record your presentations, you can even sell them as a way to gain passive income.

As an alternative service to counseling, coaching is future-focused with an emphasis on direct, practical solutions. Because coaching does not involve any clinical diagnoses, your income from coaching does not rely on insurance payments. Clients who seek out these appointments tend to be intellectual, determined, and affluent, which bodes well for your business.

In a consultant role, you’ll advise other therapists on how to handle specific, time-limited problems connected to mental health. Rather than adopting the full responsibility for a client’s therapy treatment, you’ll approach their case from a distance as you give feedback to those involved. The specialization areas for consultants vary and can include police departments, ethics committees, and judicial courts.

As a licensed supervisor, you’ll oversee the progression of a provisionally licensed therapist. These therapists-in-training must receive 1 hour of supervision weekly, which means a fixed revenue from this service for 1 year or more (depending on your state licensing board’s requirements).

New to the field, supervisees are usually eager to learn and careful with their work; you’ll be able to converse more directly and openly with them compared to counseling clients.

Once you’ve identified what services you're interested in, use these steps to thoughtfully build, launch, and promote your new offerings.

Merge your passions with clients’ needs as you add services to your business. Try to incorporate the hobbies you love into your paid work time.

You may relish being outdoors and tackling physical challenges. If so, check out nature-based or adventure therapy. Besides increasing your time spent away from a clinical office, these specializations can help set your business apart from the other ones in your area.

After attending a culinary art therapy workshop last year, I began to offer remote counseling sessions with a cooking component. This move has produced multiple benefits for my business.

I’m able to combine my professional work with an activity I enjoy doing; my clients and I talk more openly as we cook a recipe remotely from our respective kitchens; and my family is well fed later on from the healthy snack or meal I made during my sessions. 

At the start, limit yourself to the release of one fresh addition at a time. Decide which of the above services you most want to pursue, and then invest in quality resources and materials to build your expertise in that area.

Identify professionals who have the credentials or certifications you’re working towards and who present highly rated and well-attended trainings. Then, set aside time and finances to join them at their next workshop.

I knew early on that I wanted to become a registered play therapist (RPT). While a menu of workshops and conferences were available across the nation, I recognized that best training at that time could be found at the University of North Texas’s Center for Play Therapy.

I attended their summer intensive program and finished it with experience, education, and supervision hours to apply towards my RPT, not to mention the confidence with which I could tell clients’ parents about my play therapy background.

As you expand your practice, draw attention to the new services with updates inside and outside of your office. Frame the articles you’ve written about mental health and hang them in your lobby.

If you’ve written books about this topic, put them in the waiting room for clients to peruse. Harness the power of networking, especially when it comes to supervision and presentations. Inform your former supervisor, as well as local counseling and social work professors, about your availability to supervise current students or new graduates.

My initial supervisor, who guided me through the 3,000 hours I needed to earn an independent counseling license, has regularly referred potential supervisees to me. All it took was a simple phone call to him with the update that I’d finally gained my supervisor title. Remember your former supervisors, managers, and coworkers, and consider how your business can benefit them or their current clients.

Your background as a therapist doesn’t mean that counseling is the only service you can offer. You can continue your role as a professional helper as you meet others’ needs from a different approach.

Communicate regularly with your professional support network to ensure they’re updated with your latest offerings. There’s power in numbers and these allies can send you business in droves.