Mental Health Letter Templates
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When running a private practice, there will be times when you need to send clients print or email communication.
This mental health letter template set offers several collections of therapist letter templates for you to modify and use in your practice.
We’ve included letter templates you can use for official communication with clients, their other care providers, lawyers, and other organizations. As you might expect, these letters include some topics that are uncomfortable, as they include communication asking clients for overdue payments and discontinuing services.
Finding the right words or knowing what to include in a mental health support letter can be challenging, so we created these behavioral health templates to help.
After downloading them all for free, you just need to fill in the blanks to personalize each blank letter template, with your practice and client information, then send them on their way.
Here’s what you can expect to find in our collection of mental health letter templates.
Letters to clients
Client-facing letters can be particularly challenging to write, especially when reminding them of payments that are due or issues with care.
To help address many of these potentially challenging letters, our client-facing mental health letter template set includes the following:
1. Collection Letter for Unpaid Balance
This blank letter template provides you with a firm—but positive and helpful—way to ask for money for services you or another therapist in your practice provided.
It also offers you assistance in finding amicable ways to resolve the unpaid balance without being accusatory, like setting up a payment plan.
2. Moving to a New Practice Announcement Letter
Sometimes life sends you in a new direction, and you need to inform your clients that you will leave your current practice to start working at a new clinic.
This sample letter from therapists can inform your clients you are leaving, and provide them with information on how this change may affect them.
3. Letter to School When Client Will Miss Class for Treatment
If you work with school-age children, you may need to provide their school with an excuse letter if their appointments with you fall during hours they are supposed to be in class.
4. Enlisting Client’s Assistance for Claims Payment
Sometimes you bill an insurance company, only to find that they refuse to pay for one reason or another.
If you need your client’s help to reach out to them, this letter template requests your client’s assistance and provides them with steps on what they should do next.
5. Treatment Termination Due to Lack of Progress
Once you make the decision that your client no longer benefits from your care, you can send this letter template to let them know you no longer feel they can benefit from your services.
This may be because the client requires a higher level of care than the level you’re able to provide, or perhaps the client could benefit from seeing a specialist or therapist with training in a different modality.
The template encourages them to look for a new therapist and offers help in doing so.
6. Premature Discontinuation of Therapy
From time to time, your clients may make the decision to terminate services without telling you.
If they stopped showing up to sessions, answering calls, or responding to texts, you can use this mental health letter template to let them know your decision to stop services with them. It also offers them ways to resume services if they would like.
7. Insurance Card Reminder
If your practice accepts insurance, you’ll need to keep your clients’ insurance information up to date so you can properly bill for services. This letter template reminds your client to bring their current insurance card to their next appointment so you can make a copy for your records.
8. Late Cancellation Warning
When a client cancels services with minimal warning, in violation of your posted rules, you may need to send them a warning letter about the late cancellation or no-show. This letter offers you the chance to either give them a warning or ask for the cancellation fee.
9. Practice Closing for Holiday
As a holiday approaches, you may want to send this letter out with information on when your office will close and reopen.
10. Raising Your Rates
When you need to raise your rates, you can let your client know about the change with a straightforward letter explaining when the rate increase will take effect. You will want to send this letter out well in advance of the increase to give clients time to prepare or seek alternative options—if the price increase is out of their budget.
11. Response to Subpoena
If a client gets into legal trouble, a lawyer may send you a subpoena for a testimony. This letter reminds them of your state’s statutes regarding communication of client confidentiality.
For this letter, you will need to look up your state’s statutes pertaining to client-provider confidentiality rights and include them in the letter. The federal statute is already included in the template.
12. Client Termination Letter
If you need to terminate services for a client at your practice, this letter template provides a space to explain the reason for termination and encourages the client to seek additional help.
This template may be used when the client isn’t a good fit for your practice, violated or broke your terms, or needs a different provider to address their most pressing concerns.
You will want to provide a link to local resources that can help them find another practice.
Letters to colleagues
Establishing relationships with local healthcare providers can help improve care for your current clients, and potentially drive new clients your way. This mental health letter template set can help you communicate with other local providers, to establish relationships for referrals and client care.
The behavioral health templates in this set include:
1. Letter Seeking Referrals
Whether your practice is new to the area or you’re in search of new referral sources for health care facilities in your community, this letter helps prompt other providers to send clients, who are seeking mental health care, your way.
Sending this letter will offer other providers an opportunity to contact you or your practice to discuss your qualifications, the types of care you provide, and so on.
2. Thank You Letter for Referrals
It is never a bad idea to send a referral source a quick thank you note. When a new client, referred to you by another clinician or client, contacts you—sending the source a letter of appreciation can go a long way in fostering that relationship.
It also gives you a chance to tell them a bit more about yourself and the services you offer. It may even encourage them to keep sending clients your way!
3. Coordination of Care Letter
This mental health letter template provides a quick and easy way to let a primary care physician, or other health practice, know that you share a mutual client and that you saw them for a mental health assessment.
This letter template also provides you with an area to fill in your recommended treatment plan for them—gaining a more robust health history to provide comprehensive care.
4. New Practice Announcement Letter
When you are new to an area, you’ll want to open up as many referral avenues as you can. This can help generate new clients and get your practice off to a great start. This new practice announcement template lets local providers know your practice has opened and what services you can offer their clients.
Emotional support animal letters
Emotional support animals can provide a useful service to your clients.
The first letter in this mental health letter template section requests that your client receives an emotional support animal.
The second provides you with a simple template to inform an airline that your client will need to fly with their animal.
The emotional support animal letter templates included are:
- Letter Prescribing an Emotional Support Animal
- Sample Letter to Airline - Emotional Support Animal for Flight
Letter to insurance payers
Working with insurance can be challenging and time consuming. When dealing with insurance, you may find that they send you a failure to file on-time notice. This means they will not pay your claim because it was outside their defined time window.
If you know you sent the claim during their window and they reject it, due to “timeliness,” you can fill in this letter template to let them know you followed their instructions.
The “Timely Filing Appeals Letter to Insurance Payer” is included in this downloadable behavioral health templates collection.
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