Does My Insurance Cover Therapy?

Article Summary: Medical health insurance doesn’t always cover behavioral health services, like attending therapy or receiving an EMDR treatment. However, you can follow a multi-step process to evaluate your coverage and spend as little as possible to receive high-quality mental health support. Plus, many of our region’s most popular insurance plans offer at least some behavioral health coverage.

There’s a question we hear in each and every one of our intake calls:

Does my insurance cover therapy?

It’s a tricky question with multiple variables:

Every insurance policy is different.
Even if your health insurance covers behavioral health services, you might have a co-pay.
If your insurance does cover mental health services, that’s great—but it doesn’t mean your desired therapist accepts your insurance. Tip: Pick through some of our awesome therapists to find treatment today!

And that’s just for starters.

To help, we’ve developed this handy guide to understanding mental health coverage.

Table of Contents
What’s the Difference Between Medical Coverage and Behavioral Health Coverage?
Process For Checking If Your Insurance Covers Therapy
Therapy Coverage For Common Pittsburgh Insurance Plans
Find A Pittsburgh Therapist

What’s the Difference Between Medical Coverage and Behavioral Health Coverage?

Medical coverage is insurance for general healthcare services, like doctor visits, prescriptions, emergency room trips, and hospital stays. In most cases, your medical coverage is focused on the body—not the mind.

That’s where behavioral health coverage comes in. Behavioral health coverage offers financial support for a wide variety of mental health concerns and disorders, like anxiety, depression, PTSD, grief, personality disorders, and more.

Not all medical plans cover behavioral health issues, which means your insurance card might not work with your favorite therapist—unless it has behavioral health coverage.

Process For Checking If Your Insurance Covers Therapy

Here’s our recommended strategy for checking if your insurance covers therapy. Of course, you can always contact us for support while following these steps!

1. Know What Your Insurance Is Called

This sounds like an obvious step, but it’s easy to get confused here. Many insurance products have very similar names.

For example, if you have insurance through Highmark, that’s not quite enough information. Not all Highmark plans offer behavioral health coverage.

Take a closer look at the card. If you have Highmark, maybe it’s actually Highmark’s Blue Cross Blue Shield. Or, maybe it’s Highmark Wholecare.

It may seem like a trivial difference, but it has a massive impact on your coverage and financial liability.

2. Know Your Deductible

The average deductible in 2025 is $1,790, according to ConsumerShield. In other words: On average, Americans pay $1,790 out-of-pocket annually before insurance kicks in.

But that’s just the average deductible.

Yours could be higher—or it could be lower. Either way, it’s important to know. If you’ve already reached your deductible for the year, it’s possible to have your therapy sessions completely covered by insurance (assuming you have behavioral health coverage).

3. Know Your Co-Pay

For many health plans, co-pays are confusing. Depending on your plan details, you could have different co-pays for visiting with your PCP, for visiting with a specialist, for visiting the ER, or for filling a prescription at your local pharmacy.

And it becomes even more complicated when it comes to behavioral health. A few questions to ask:

Do you have a co-pay for behavioral health? That’s the obvious first question to ask.
Is your desired therapist in-network?
What’s your co-pay for in-person sessions? Sometimes it’s different from virtual sessions.
What’s your co-pay for virtual sessions? Sometimes it’s different from in-person sessions.

4. Know Your Schedule

Believe it or not, there are ways to “game” the system in your favor—and our Operations Manager Natalie Garritano can help you through the process.

For example, let’s say you’re interested in starting therapy, but you also know you have an operation coming up soon. If that operation’s out-of-pocket expenses mean you’ll finally meet your deductible for the year, it could make financial sense to wait on therapy until after your surgery’s over.

That way, you could attend therapy for free for the rest of the year.

Another way of looking at it: Once you know your out-of-pocket expenses and/or co-pay for therapy, you can take a look at your personal finances and determine what you can actually afford for your mental health.

Therapy Coverage For Common Pittsburgh Insurance Plans

Figuring out therapy coverage is confusing, but here’s the good news: Many of the most popular plans in our region cover at least some level of behavioral health services.

But even if your plan covers therapy, pay attention to the fine print. They may have rules around co-pays, remaining in network, meeting your deductible, or getting a referral from your primary care physician or another doctor.

Here’s some information to help you get started: