Niche Mental Wellness Services

Stages of Treatment

Structure is a part of the formula for creating change.

Niche Mental Health Therapy and Mental Wellness Coaching are on-going mental wellness services. This means that once you sign up with Niche Therapy you have started an episode of care with your therapist / coach. You can continue to work together until you reach your goals, take a break, or graduate. Even though Niche Mental Health Therapy and Niche Mental Wellness Coaching are different types of services, they follow the same stages of treatment: Engagement, Assessment & Planning, Intervention, Evaluate, and Graduate.

As briefly described below, Niche Courses are specific psychoeducational private sessions that do NOT follow these stages of treatment; they are separate single-serving products. Please see the Niche Courses page for a more in depth description of that service.

Engagement

  • 1) Contact Zane to inquire about Mental Wellness Services.

    The therapeutic relationship (between client and clinician) is the most important part of therapy. It is very important to reach out and connect with potential therapists / coaches before scheduling appointments. Think about a brief phone call as you interviewing to hire help. Remember, this is for you! Therapists and coaches work for you.

    If you and Zane “click” over the phone, then we can move on to the next steps of Engagement. However, if you don’t feel interested services or compatible with Zane, that is perfectly fine; his style may not be for you. That being the case, you and Zane can still brainstorm ideas to help you find a therapeutic fit somewhere else and Zane may be able to provide you with other resources to aid in your search.

  • 2) Determine your path.

    We have three paths in Niche Mental Wellness Services:

    • Mental Health Therapy - traditional therapy provided in the boutique Niche tradition.

    • Mental Wellness / Life Coaching - engaging in on-going life change pursuit with a professional and committed coach.

    • Niche Courses - these private and individual sessions exploring specific subjects are available to anyone that desires more information on specialized topics without the commitment of on-going services. They are what they are: a topic reviewed with a professional over a certain number of sessions for a certain fee. Once you complete the course, you are done. This is NOT therapy. This is NOT coaching.

    Mental Health Therapy will be provided to those with diagnosable mental health disorders and can be billed to insurance companies. If you are unsure if you have a diagnosis - no problem. We can figure this out together.

    These three paths are not set in stone. In fact, many clients move from Mental Health Therapy to Mental Wellness Coaching services once they have met their mental health treatment goals. Some clients might not want to begin with therapy focusing on a psychological issue and only want to work on specific change in other parts of their life - that is perfect! They can start with Mental Wellness Coaching. Maybe a current client wants to check out a new Niche Course while taking a couple sessions break from another Niche service - perfectly doable. Remember, services are for you. Feel empowered to ask for what you want.

    Unfortunately, Mental Wellness / Life Coaching services and Niche Courses are not currently “medically necessary” and cannot be billed to insurance companies.

  • 3) Complete the digital intake packet.

    Once you have decided to give Niche Mental Wellness Services a try, our team will send you a digital intake packet to fill out. This necessary packet will provide you with more information about Niche Mental Wellness Services, as well as provide Zane with more information about you.

Assessment & Planning

We collaborate to identify your needs and goals. Together, we create a unique Niche Plan to help you reach those goals.

You and Zane meet for your first session. Zane begins therapy/coaching with every client where they are. This means the client and Zane explore client needs and problems, identify goals, and collaboratively create a plan to pursue change. The Niche Plan you create will outline the goals you want to pursue, barriers you need to overcome, define change objectives, and detail interventions used to tackle barriers including specific skills utilized. Finally, the Niche Plan will document how often you want to engage in individual sessions to work towards change and how often you need a break from on-going services (see Graduate below).

Assessment is an on-going process, therefore Zane will continue to monitor clients for other strengths and barriers identified throughout all phases of services that may be added to Niche Plans.

Intervention

We work together to help you pursue change.

At this point, we are working to create life change. Niche Change Services may include learning new coping skills, processing trauma, learning to perform better…whatever you want to work towards that is within the scope of Zane’s ability and competency. Take a look at Zane’s CV to see what types of therapy / interventions Zane has received formal training to use and is experienced providing to clients. That being said, Zane is always willing to receive more training and do more research to help clients reach their goals. We can talk about this if you find an intervention Zane is not familiar with; maybe he will be interested in learning that skill / intervention to help you reach your goal.

Evaluate

We work together to determine if you are making progress.

Throughout Niche Change Services, you and Zane will review the progress you are making towards your goals. This may include subjective scaling exercises (e.g., “on a scale of 1 to 10…”) or formal standardized measures (e.g., PHQ-9, GAD7, etc.). Evaluation is useful because it helps us determine if interventions we have chosen to create change are helping you reach your goals.

Graduate

 

We determine that you have met your objectives for this episode of care and you graduate (i.e., take a break from services).

All Niche clients will engage in “episodic care.” This means that when we create your Niche Plan (in Assessment & Planning stage of treatment), we will build in mandatory breaks from services. These breaks could be from as small as one week between episodes to a few months or more; it depends on what we (client and Zane) determine is helpful for growth and change. Think about reaching an overall goal as moving step-by-step. In between steps, we take a little break. Imagine sports; there are seasons with breaks between. Even within sports seasons, there are different parts of the season (e.g., pre-season, Spring training, regular season, post season, championships, etc.). Athletes constantly prepare to perform, but performance and preparation will look different at different parts of the season. I believe the same is true for Mental Health Therapy and Mental Wellness Coaching.

Change is a mysterious thing. Over the years, I have witnessed clients make little to no change, gradual change, and sporadic or punctuated change. One obvious part of change is taking a rest, or a break, from therapy or coaching services. Change is often found in the absence of formal services while clients utilize their skills and resources to manage problems on their own. After all, a major goal of therapy and coaching is to help clients learn to become their own agents of change and eventually shift the reliance on the therapist / change coach to one of support.

Therefore, Niche Therapy believes episodes of care are vital to the change process. This means that clients engaging in Niche Change Services will be required to take breaks from services every so often per their Niche Plan created in collaboration with Zane. Niche Therapy believes rest can stimulate growth, promote self-reliance, and build self-confidence. In any case, do not think you will be “graduated” without notice; episodes of care are a part of your Niche Plan. Expect practice, growth, and hopeful epiphanies between Niche episodes of care.

“There is a choice…I must…always remind myself.”

— Zane W. DeWitz (Niche Therapist / Change Coach)