Dr. Cole provides medication management and psychotherapeutic treatment for most mental health conditions, including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, ADHD, and others. While most people see a psychiatrist primarily for medication management, Dr. Cole provides both medication management and psychotherapeutic treatment for people that prefer to receive both forms of treatment from a single provider.

Dr. Cole sees patients virtually, using an easy-to-use telehealth platform, or in-person in Colleyville, Texas. Dr. Cole strongly recommends that initial consultations be done in-person, but initial consultations can also be done virtually if you prefer. Follow-up medication managements can be done either in-person or virtually.

Psychotherapy visits occur in-person. For already-established patients, virtual or phone-based psychotherapy sessions can be done on an intermittent basis when needed.

The answer is most likely yes! Dr. Cole has expertise in treating most psychiatric conditions. However, our clinic is not appropriate for people looking for treatment primarily for substance use disorders or for children under the age of 18.

If you are not sure if our clinic is right for your needs, please contact us.

Colleyville Psychiatric Associates and Dr. Cole are considered out-of-network with all insurance companies. You will be responsible for the full cost of the visit at the time of your visit. Depending on your specific insurance benefits, you may be able to request reimbursement for the cost of your care from your insurance company. Dr. Cole will provide you with the documentation that you need to submit to your insurance company for reimbursement. With most insurance plans, a significant proportion of the cost of your care will be reimbursed to you. Please consult your health insurance plan documents for details regarding out-of-network benefits.

Additional information about Dr. Cole’s fees is available here. Dr. Cole has a limited number of reduced fee appointment slots available for those interested in pursuing psychoanalytic treatment. Please contact us if you are interested in possibly being seen for a reduced fee.

Please complete the appointment request form to request an initial consultation. Once you submit your form, Dr. Cole will contact you within 24 hours to schedule your appointment and answer any questions you may have.

Yes! Colleyville Psychiatric Associates uses the SimplePractice electronic health record system, which includes an online portal that allows you to send messages to Dr. Cole, reschedule and request appointments online, share documents with your Dr. Cole electronically, attend virtual appointments, and pay your appointment fees, all in one place. You can also receive automated reminders via e-mail and text message for your appointments through the portal. For virtual visits, links to the appointment are included in these reminders, making the appointments simple to join.

The online portal can be accessed here.

In some cases, controlled substances can be effective in the management of psychiatric symptoms, and our practice uses these medications in treatment when appropriate. However, controlled substances carry more risks than non-controlled substances and must be used carefully. The prescription of controlled substances is at the discretion of Dr. Cole’s judgment and will be discussed at your evaluation, if appropriate.

All patients are required to sign a controlled substances contract prior to joining the practice which describes our policies surrounding the use of controlled substances. You may review these policies here.

The frequency of follow-up appointments varies from person to person depending on the person’s preferences and treatment and Dr. Cole’s recommendations. For medication management, follow-up visits typically occur monthly to start. More frequent meetings may be recommended in some cases. For those who are doing well and whose medication regimen is not changing, follow-up visits can be as infrequent as every 3 months.

For psychotherapy, Dr. Cole meets no less frequently than once a week. In many cases, more frequent meetings may be recommended.

The ongoing frequency of follow-up visits will be discussed at each appointment and determined together with Dr. Cole.

Follow-up visits are generally 30 minutes. In rare cases – and with the agreement of you and Dr. Cole – follow-up visits can be shortened to 15 minutes. In some cases, longer follow-up visits may be needed. Please note that the fee for a follow-up visit is based on the scheduled duration of the appointment. For example, if you are scheduled for a 30-minute follow-up visit but only use 20 minutes of the appointment, you are still responsible for the fee for a 30-minute visit. To respect the time of other patients, appointments will end promptly at the scheduled time. If needed, future follow-up visits can be scheduled for a longer duration.

The length of your follow-up visits will be discussed at each appointment and determined together with Dr. Cole.

For brief questions or concerns, no. However, phone calls lasting 15 minutes or longer will be billed at Dr. Cole’s usual hourly rate. This charge will be included in the bill for your next appointment.

There is no charge for communication sent electronically (e.g., messages through the patient portal, e-mails, etc.). However, some questions cannot be appropriately answered electronically and may require a phone call or visit to address.

Psychotherapy – informally referred to as therapy or counseling – is a type of mental health treatment that consists of talking about your symptoms and concerns with a licensed professional. There are many forms of psychotherapy that are commonly used today – cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and exposure and response prevention (ERP) are a few well-known examples. While each of these modalities uses different techniques, emphasizes different concepts and ideas, and is used in the treatment of particular psychiatric diagnoses, all psychotherapeutic modalities share the same broad goals of increasing emotional self-understanding and strengthening the ability to manage challenging emotional experiences.

Psychotherapy is administered by many different mental health professionals, including licensed professional counselors (LPCs), masters-level therapists, and psychologists. Though done less commonly in modern mental health treatment, psychiatrists are also licensed to provide psychotherapy and receive psychotherapy training during their psychiatry residency.

Psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are psychotherapeutic modalities founded on the following ideas:

– Much of our mental and emotional experience occurs outside of awareness and in the unconscious. To make day-to-day life easier to navigate, our minds censor thoughts and emotions that may cause us emotional distress and use emotional and cognitive “shortcuts” to make situations easier to understand and respond to. While there are tremendous advantages to this function of the mind, it can also lead to emotional difficulty and suffering, particularly in individuals that have had extremely painful or traumatic life experiences. One goal of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy is to bring these unconscious thoughts and emotions to conscious experience with the therapist. In doing so, those thoughts and emotions can be discussed and “worked through.”

– Our experience in the here and now is strongly shaped by our past experiences, particularly those that occurred in early life. This leads to the development of patterns in our thinking, behavior, and relationships that can lead to emotional suffering. Sometimes the connections between the past and present are clear; many times, however, these connections are out of our awareness and difficult to recognize. If you have ever had the experience of feeling unexpectedly strong emotions in a situation – be it happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety, or any other emotion – or find yourself repeating thought or behavior patterns in spite of your “better judgment,” you may have had the experience of something in the present “tapping into” an experience from the past. Paying special attention to these moments can help us understand aspects of your emotional life that may be hidden from your day-to-day experience.

– The relationship between you and the therapist is used as an important tool to understand your experience. Because the therapist is another person with whom patterns of thinking and feeling “play out,” exploring thoughts and feelings about your therapist and being curious about their sources can help you and the therapist understand your emotional life more deeply.

Compared to other psychotherapeutic modalities, psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy tends to be less structured from session to session, and the focus of any particular session is whatever is on your mind at that time. Over time, patterns present in your emotional life can be recognized and, once in awareness, can be “worked on.” Psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy is often longer than treatment using other psychotherapeutic modalities, typically occurring over years as opposed to weeks or months.

Psychoanalysis is a specific type of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis is based on the same theoretical foundations as psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy but uses different techniques during the treatment. Specifically, psychoanalysis is distinguished from other psychotherapeutic techniques by:

– The frequency of meetings. In psychoanalysis, you and the therapist typically meet no less than 3 times each week and, most commonly, 5 times each week. Meeting at this frequency increases the emotional intensity of the treatment, increasing the intensity of the relationship between you and the analyst and allowing you and the analyst to “work through” more difficult material.

– The use of a couch. While use of the couch is not required for psychoanalysis, “classical” psychoanalysis often has the patient (sometimes called an “analysand” in psychoanalysis) lying on the couch with the analyst seated behind the patient. With the therapist out of view, the patient is often able to talk more freely about the thoughts occurring in their mind without fear of judgment.

Psychoanalysis often provides a more in-depth treatment experience compared to other psychotherapeutic modalities. While not for everyone or every problem, psychoanalysis can often be helpful for problems when other forms of treatment have not, including other psychotherapeutic approaches.

You can read more about psychoanalysis at the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA)’s website.

While everyone’s experience in psychotherapy is unique, psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy focus on your unique experiences and problems. All that is expected of you is that you speak about whatever is on your mind at the time. Sometimes, this may include discussing topics that do not seem immediately related to whatever brought you to treatment. Over time, though, this process results in greater understanding of the your emotional experience, allowing the process of “working through” the problems that brought you to treatment to begin with to occur.

What each person “gets out of” psychotherapy can vary substantially. Some people have a specific problem or conflict that they want to try to resolve with the help of a therapist. Others may want to understand why they have experienced a lifetime of depression, seem to find themselves in repeatedly unsatisfying relationships, or other more persistent problems. While psychotherapy may not “fix” these problems, psychotherapy can increase emotional understanding and awareness and help facilitate living an emotionally authentic life, often reducing emotional distress in day-to-day life.

Many people ask how long a course of therapy lasts. There is no general answer to this question: everyone is unique in what they are hoping to achieve with therapy and how things unfold during treatment. In contrast to some other forms of psychotherapy, psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy is not “time-limited,” and a common saying is that therapy “takes as long as it takes.” In general, though, a course of therapy typically typically lasts a few years of regular, weekly meetings but may be significantly shorter or longer. The average length of a course of psychoanalysis is 3-5 years.