Questions? We’ve got answers.

You’ll be matched with an associate therapist who has completed their graduate training and is working toward full licensure under close clinical supervision. At Attune, your therapist receives structured, detailed feedback from a licensed supervisor after every session. This means your care has more clinical oversight than you’d typically receive at a traditional practice, even from a fully licensed therapist working independently.

Sessions are 50 minutes and take place over secure video. You and your therapist will work together to set goals and monitor your progress throughout treatment, so there’s continuity and direction to the work from week to week.

We use a sliding scale fee structure based on your income and financial situation, typically $60–$150 per session. Your fee will be discussed during the intake process. If you’re not on one of our in-network plans, we can also provide superbills for out-of-network insurance reimbursement.

Yes — we’re in-network with Aetna, Optum, UnitedHealthcare, Sutter Health Plus, Sharp Health Plan, and Western Health Advantage. If you’re on a different plan, we’re also private pay with sliding scale fees, and can provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement.

Yes — and we go further than the legal minimum. When you use insurance for therapy, a formal psychiatric diagnosis gets attached to your file and flows to your insurer, where it can get flagged in underwriting databases (including the Medical Information Bureau) that life and disability insurers query when you apply for coverage. A diagnosis of anxiety or depression can result in a mental/nervous exclusion rider on a disability policy, and that record persists for years. For people in high-stakes careers, this isn’t theoretical: pilots face FAA medical certification consequences for documented mental health diagnoses, defense contractors navigate SF-86 security clearance disclosures that include mental health consultations, and attorneys and physicians deal with licensing board reviews that have historically asked about mental health treatment. If you choose our private-pay track, Attune does not bill insurance, so no formal diagnosis is attached to your file and nothing flows to underwriting databases. If you use one of our in-network plans instead, standard insurance billing practices apply and a diagnosis is filed as with any covered care — but we still never share your information with third parties, not advertisers, not employers, not anyone. Your data is used for exactly one thing: your care. HIPAA sets the floor. We built higher.

Yes. Attune operates as a HIPAA-compliant covered entity. Your sessions are conducted via secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth and your information is handled with full privacy protections. We do not use your data to train any AI models.

Our therapists are trained in evidence-based approaches including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and trauma-focused therapies. Treatment is personalized to your needs and goals.

That’s completely okay, and it’s part of what the intake conversation is for. If we’re not the right match for your needs, we’ll do our best to connect you with a provider or resource that’s a better fit.

For the presentations we work with — anxiety, burnout, depression, occupational stress — the research says the credential alone isn’t what you should be evaluating. Across studies representing more than 17,000 patients, therapist licensure status and years of experience explained virtually none of the variance in patient outcomes (Wampold & Brown, 2005; Chow & Miller, 2015). Where the research does identify a risk is implementation drift — when clinicians without adequate supervision shift away from structured, evidence-based approaches without realizing it (Waller, 2009, Behaviour Research and Therapy). That’s precisely what our supervision model is designed to prevent: weekly direct session review, structured feedback, and session-by-session outcome tracking eliminate the drift that happens when clinicians work without oversight — whether they’re licensed or not.

Medicine figured this out decades ago — surgical checklists, nursing protocols, outcome audits exist because systems catch what individuals miss. Therapy has been slower to follow. In a landmark study tracking 170 therapists over up to 18 years, clinical effectiveness did not improve with experience, and in some cases quietly declined (Goldberg et al., 2016, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology). What did predict outcomes: the individual clinician, the quality of the relationship, and whether someone was monitoring whether the therapy was actually working. Therapists working without outcome monitoring have been shown to miss 97.5% of patients whose condition was quietly getting worse (Hannan et al., 2005, Psychotherapy Research). At Attune, every case is reviewed weekly by a licensed clinical director using direct session observation, and we track outcomes every session using validated tools like the PHQ-9 and GAD-7. In a 2025 study of 18,721 patients across 755 clinicians at a platform implementing this kind of structured outcome monitoring, the result was a 23.6% relative improvement in combined anxiety and depression outcomes (Frontiers in Health Services, 2025).

A structured 15-minute conversation, not a therapy session, where we get a clear picture of what you’re seeking in therapy, what you’ve tried, establish your session rate, and whether Attune is the right fit. We’ll get you scheduled for your first session during that time, but if we’re not the right fit for you, no hard feelings!

If you’re on one of our in-network plans (Aetna, Optum, UnitedHealthcare, Sutter Health Plus, Sharp Health Plan, or Western Health Advantage), using it means every session counts toward your deductible and out-of-pocket max. If you’re not, here’s the case for cash-pay. The math: if you’re on a high-deductible health plan, you’re likely paying out of pocket for therapy anyway until your deductible is met — typically $1,600 to $2,500, with in-network sessions running $150–$250 each. Our sliding scale rate ($60–$150) is often lower than what you’d pay pre-deductible, and that gap is real from session one. The clinical autonomy: on the cash-pay track, we’re not constrained by what an insurance adjuster considers “medically necessary.” Your care is designed around what you actually need, not a session limit set by someone who’s never met you.

Yes. Therapy is an eligible expense under both HSA and FSA plans, and you can pay for Attune sessions directly from your account. Note: California does not conform to the federal HSA tax exemption, so CA residents receive less tax advantage from HSA spending — another reason the straight cash-pay math often works in your favor.

We know before you have to tell us. Outcomes are tracked every session, so we see the data moving — or not moving — in real time. If your scores aren’t trending in the right direction, your clinical team reviews the case, your therapist adjusts the approach, and if needed, we discuss whether a different clinician or modality would serve you better. You don’t have to advocate for yourself — that’s our job.

High-functioning anxiety isn’t a formal clinical diagnosis, but it’s a common and real pattern: anxiety that coexists with strong outward performance. It can look like persistent worry, overpreparing, physical tension, or difficulty relaxing, all while still meeting deadlines and looking fine from the outside. It’s often missed precisely because it doesn’t interfere with performance the way people expect anxiety to. See our dedicated page or take the 2-minute check-in quiz to see how it might be showing up for you.

The short version: quality, affordability, and oversight. Every case at Attune is reviewed weekly by a licensed clinical director using direct session observation, your progress is tracked every session with validated tools like the PHQ-9 and GAD-7, and our sliding scale pricing ($60–$150 per session) is based on your household income rather than a flat monthly subscription. See our full comparison for details.

No. Attune therapists don’t prescribe, adjust, or manage GLP-1 medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, or Zepbound, and we’re not a medical weight loss clinic. We work alongside whatever medical care you’re already receiving and focus on the therapy side: your relationship with food, your body image, and the habits that help your results last. See our dedicated page for more on how we support this.

A dietitian focuses on what and how much you eat. We focus on why: the food noise, the anxiety about regain, the identity shift that comes with a changed body. Many clients work with both at once, and we’re glad to coordinate with your care team if that’s helpful.

These are official California titles for therapists who’ve completed their graduate degree and are working toward full licensure. AMFT stands for Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, ASW for Associate Clinical Social Worker, and APCC for Associate Professional Clinical Counselor. All three are registered with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS) and are legally required to practice under the supervision of a licensed clinician, which is exactly the model Attune is built around.

No. Associate and licensed therapists at Attune provide psychotherapy, not medication management. If medication might be helpful for you, we’ll talk about it during your intake and can coordinate with a prescriber, a primary care doctor or psychiatrist, as part of your care.

Attune currently provides telehealth therapy to adults located in California only. Therapists are licensed (or registered as associates) to practice in the state where you’re physically located during your session, so if you move out of California or are traveling out of state for an extended period, let your therapist know. It may affect your ability to continue sessions.

The biggest differences are supervision and pricing structure. At Attune, every associate therapist’s cases are reviewed weekly by a licensed clinical director using direct session observation, a level of oversight most large platforms don’t offer. Our pricing is also based on your household income ($60–$150 per session) rather than a flat monthly subscription, so what you pay reflects what you can actually afford.

Yes. If you use insurance to pay for therapy, a formal diagnosis is attached to your file and shared with your insurer as part of standard billing. That diagnosis can be flagged in underwriting databases that other insurers query later, including the Medical Information Bureau (MIB), and can result in a mental/nervous exclusion rider on a disability policy that persists for years. If you choose Attune’s private-pay track instead, we don’t bill insurance at all, so no formal diagnosis is filed and nothing flows to those databases. See our full answer above on how we handle privacy and insurance billing.

Sliding scale rates at Attune typically range from $60 to $150 per session, based on your household size and income. See how sliding scale therapy works and check your estimated rate →

Insurance copays are often cheaper if your deductible is met, but sliding scale is usually the better option if you’re uninsured or your plan doesn’t cover mental health well. Read the full comparison →