Frequently Asked Questions

YOUR BURNING QUESTIONS, ANSWERED!

You want to trust – trust us, that we know what we’re doing, that we’re a great fit for your personality and goals, and that we’re genuine, approachable providers. Instead of selling you on our services and specialties, we wanted to answer some of the most common questions our previous clients have asked – the questions we think you might have.

We are picturing you in our mind’s eye as we have this written conversation. We hope it gives you the practical information you need to make an informed decision about your well-being. We also hope that you can tell how much we really care about you, love what we do, and believe in how our approach and services can help.

I want to connect!

How do I schedule appointments?

Connecting is super easy! For your first appointment, we require a brief 5 minute phone consultation to make sure we’re a good fit for one another and your goals. If we both feel like we’re a good match in personality and your therapeutic needs, we will schedule your first appointment during that initial call. If we’re not a good match, we’ll recommend other people and places that might be a better option for you.

After your first appointment, you can make additional session reservations several ways: via text, email, or phone calls, during your appointment, or as recurring set times.

When can we meet?

We offer appointments Mondays through Thursdays between 10 and 3:30 pm.

We take and make phone calls with clients from 9-5 Mondays through Thursdays and from 9-12 on Fridays. We strive to respond to client and potential client messages within 24 hours.

Where can we meet?

We have three great options for where to meet:

in our office*
outdoors at local Las Vegas parks and trails
at your home, office, hotel, or car via telemedicine

*Our physical office is located at:

8430 West Lake Mead Blvd
Bldg 100, Ste 111
Las Vegas, NV 89128

I want to invest in my well-being!

What are the service rates?

Rates for our high-end wellness offerings depend on the type of care provided and the duration requested.

Rates for Individual Therapy

$350 for a 45-minute one-time Intake Assessment (the first appointment)
$250* per 45-minute session
$335* per 60-minute session

*Creative therapy services (e.g., hiking/walking therapy or out-of-office appointments) are slightly more expensive based on the location and allotted time.

Integrative & Holistic Psychiatry Rates

$100 per 15-minute session (Stable Long Term Medication Management)
$150 per 20-minute session (Medication Management)
$300 per 45-minute session (Psychotherapy +/- Medication Management)
$450 per 60-minute session (Psychiatric Evaluation, In Depth Psychotherapy)

Professional & Creativity Enhancement

Call for a consultation

Do you take my insurance?

Bamboo Center does not accept any forms of insurance. We do this for two main reasons:

To maximize your confidentiality and reflect our dedication to discreteness. When a therapist accepts payment from an insurance company, we must submit a diagnosis (even if one is not warranted) and provide ongoing documentation of your treatment to the insurance company. Your privacy is important to us and we believe your treatment should stay between you and your physician.
To keep you in full control of your services. Policy benefits change frequently and often without warning. To avoid major interruptions in your care, especially at crucial points in your wellness journey, you are positioned to maintain financial responsibility for your care.

If you would like to request reimbursement for out of network services, we can provide you with a monthly Super Bill to submit to your insurance carrier.

We recommend that you contact your insurance carrier to enquire about their out-of-network reimbursement policy before we initiate a therapeutic relationship.

Do you offer a sliding scale?

We want to provide you (and all our clients) with the highest standard of care, so we offer our services at a set rate.

Wellness services like psychiatry, psychology, and well-being consultations are an investment of your time, money, and energy – and you deserve the best possible experience in return. By keeping the focus on your treatment rather than on financial negotiations, we can make the absolute most of your investment.

I want to understand the difference…

What’s the difference between talking to a therapist or my best friend or family?

While therapy involves a relationship with another person with whom you feel heard, non-judged, unconditionally accepted, safe, and supported, it is different from chatting with trusted friends and family.

In therapy

You are the focus. Your clinician will not talk about his or her own problems or opinions.
Feedback is objective. Your clinician is trained to be unbiased in their interactions with you and they have nothing to gain or lose by sharing that objectivity with you.
What you share stays confidential. Unlike with some family and friends, your therapist keeps what you disclose discreet and it isn’t shared with anyone else. There may be times when the clinician is mandated to report or intervene. These include if you mention knowing of a vulnerable person who is endangered or neglected (such as a child, a person with disabilities, or an elderly adult), or if you are an immediate danger to yourself or another individual. We will discuss these limits of confidentiality in detail during our first appointment.
The physician knows how to help. Your clinician is a doctor who has been trained in therapeutic conversation, assessment, and research-based interventions.

We recommend having both resources – friends who are caring, supportive, and available 24/7 and an excellent clinician who is empowering, insightful, and amazing at what they do!

What is the difference between a life coach, psychotherapist, psychologist, and psychiatrist?

Service providers like life coaches, psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists are all awesome resources to have in your efforts to live life well. Yet they are distinct from one another in their training, expertise, and ability to respond to your goals and needs. Here are some super simplified descriptions of each role so you have an idea of which provider type is best for you:

Life Coach – Anyone can call themself a life coach and no formal training or accreditation is needed (this is the scary part of the current coaching field). They focus on helping you improve your mindset (e.g., money mindset, relationship mindset) and slay specific goals (e.g., starting a business, running a marathon).
Psychotherapist (aka therapist or counselor) – Licensed mental health professionals are generally known as “Psychotherapists,” “therapists,” and “counselors.” The term covers providers who have some degree of mental health training, hold a state license, and use talk therapy approaches over medical ones to respond to mental health challenges. The label includes psychologists and psychiatrists as well as counselors with master’s degree level training, such as a LPC, LMFT, and LCSW.
Psychologist – Specialized in the scientific study of behaviors and mental processes. Only those who complete doctoral level graduate training and receive authorization from their state licensing boards can call themselves a Psychologist. They have 4-5 years of graduate training (and often 1-2 years of post doctoral fellowship training) that focus on human development, typical and abnormal behaviors, assessment, diagnosis, and therapeutic interventions for a broad spectrum of traumas and life experiences. They apply this knowledge to help others understand, explain, and change their inner and outer worlds for improved health and well-being.
Psychiatrist – Experts at mental health. Only those who complete medical school, a psychiatry residency program, and receive authorization from their state licensing boards can call themselves a Psychiatrist. Their training includes 4-5 years of medical school and 4-5 years of residency focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of mental, behavioral, and mood disorders. Their training enables them to prescribe (and de-prescribe) medications to support mental health. Some, like Dr. Bjorndal, have training in psychotherapy as well and can offer both counseling and medication management services. Policy benefits change frequently and often without warning. To avoid major interruptions in your care, especially at crucial points in your wellness journey, you are positioned to maintain financial responsibility for your care.

Please be mindful of the training and experience of any practitioner you consider working with.

What is the difference between a Psychiatrist and a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner (NP)?

Psychiatrists are required to complete 8+ years of post-graduate training: 4 years of medical school and another 4 years of psychiatry residency. This equates to approximately 16,000 hours of clinical experience.

Psychiatric NPs complete 2 years of post-graduate training that equates to approximately 600 hours of clinical experience.

I want to know what to expect!

What does individual therapy involve?

In counseling, you have dedicate time and a safe space with a trained professional to:

explore your feelings, beliefs, behaviors
work through painful and influential experiences and memories
specify changes that you’d like to make in your inner and outer worlds
better understand yourself and others
set and work towards personal aspirations and professional goals
curate overall wellness and well-being

Counseling can alleviate much of the suffering in your past, present, and future by equipping you with therapeutic support, inner capacities (e.g., distress tolerance, self-compassion, self trust) and tools (e.g., coping skills, experiential exercises, perspective shifts) needed to respond to them more appropriately.

During your first appointment, we will seek to learn all the ‘must know’ details to jumpstart a relationship with you – like a highlight reel of your life. We discuss the reasons you are seeking therapy, assess details about your holistic health (e.g., mental, physical, social, professional, spiritual, environmental), and feature big picture life experiences. It may take several sessions before your physician gets a solid understanding of your needs and how to best help, but the first appointment tends to leave both you and your clinician wanting more time together!

Subsequent sessions build off our initial appointment and become increasingly rich with detail, depth, and discovery. They are structured as comfortable conversations that may include questions to help you gain insights and increase self awareness, psychoeducation to help you better understand yourself and others, and skill building to equip you with resources to live with more ease and assurance. With time, you will notice changes in your inner and outer worlds – sometimes drastic, often subtle – and a growing sense of self-respect, meaning, vitality, and healing.

To learn more about our approach in therapy, click here.

What does holistic & integrative psychiatry involve?

In your first psychiatry appointment, we engage in a comprehensive evaluation. This dynamic assessment covers multiple time dimensions (e.g., past, present, future) and multiple domains: mind, body, spirit, profession, and environment. We discuss the reasons that brought you in for services, your goals, and what you think we need to know about you in order to kickstart our work together. We then collaborate to create a tailored treatment plan to address the identified root causes.

Subsequent appointments assess the effectiveness of any recommended treatments to ensure that we’re making progress. We want to not only help you feel better as quickly and naturally as possible, but to facilitate your overall wellness and well-being.

Read more about what to expect in your psychiatry appointments here.

How long are individual therapy sessions?

We offer three different session lengths to make sure we best meet your needs:

45-minutes of face-to-face time
60-minutes of face-to-face time
120-minutes of face-to-face time

How long are psychiatry appointments?

Our holistic & integrative psychiatry appointments have various lengths based on your treatment needs:

30-minute sessions
60-minute sessions
90 minutes (the Intake Assessment only)

What do I have to do in sessions?

There really isn’t anything specific you “do” in counseling sessions – other than be yourself. Some things we do include:

Talk – When we meet, you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings. You can be brutally honest, curse like you’re in a Tarantino movie, and drop PC politeness. We talk about anything and everything – your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, relationships, history, aspirations, likes, dislikes, fantasies, fears – in the way that you talk most naturally. Sharing your inner world allows both of us to better understand you and how to best meet your needs.
Discover – You will likely surprise yourself as you move through the therapeutic process. You will learn things about yourself that you didn’t know, find perspectives about your life that heal you and your relationships, feel open to things you never thought you would ever try or like… It’s an awesome perk of the process!
Solve – Every session is pretty much a problem solving event. You talk about big picture goals or challenges from the past week, and we work together to resolve them through the various techniques and modalities that make the physicians at Bamboo Center such dynamic wellness providers.
Learn – In addition to learning about yourself, your clinician will help you learn about human development, emotions, thoughts, coping skills, behaviors, and perspectives that will facilitate reaching your goals and transforming your life into one you love.
Breathe – Your sessions are a space to pause from the business of everyday life and breathe. Additionally, we teach breathing exercises to maximize health and wellness, both in and between sessions.
Practice – We will often learn and then practice techniques and skills together, like mindfulness, communication skills, grounding tools, tapping, and many, many more!

What kinds of therapy do you offer?

We offer a multi-dimensional approach to your well-being, and the types of therapy and therapeutic interventions recommended are based on you – your goals, lifestyle, personality, and preferences.

All our approaches maximize the power of the therapeutic relationship between you and your provider, our belief in your inherent amazingness, and a non-pathologizing view of any symptoms present.

You can learn more about specific types of therapy offered by reading more about the specific approaches of Dr. Darbonne and Dr. Bjorndal.

How often do we need to meet?

Therapy frequency

Research and professional experience indicate that therapy is most powerful when it’s conducted weekly. We often taper session frequency as the intensity of your presenting concerns decrease, you feel more competent to maintain the changes and progress made, and your life becomes more representative of your values and priorities. While we recommend this pattern of session frequency, we can meet more or less often as dictated by your preferences and/or financial constraints.

Psychiatry frequency

When prescribing and managing medications, or helping you taper off medications, you will meet with your physician more frequently – as often as weekly while adjusting medications. When we’ve found the right medication with the correct dosage, then check-ins range from monthly to every few months.

Personal and Professional Development Consultations Frequency

At the beginning of wellness and development focused consultations, it is most helpful to meet weekly. This allows us to jumpstart the process by digging into your inner and external obstacles, which lays the foundation for subsequent action steps. Once the increased self-awareness facilitates readiness for action, sessions can remain weekly or reduce to every other week. This allows time and space to practice the ideas, skills, and strategies identified in your sessions. As you feel confident in your progress and the process, we can reduce sessions further to once every 3-4 weeks. These sessions help you stay on track as you stand on your own, test your new skills, and identify if and where additional support is needed. As with all our services, we tailor frequency and duration of your appointments to your preferences and needs.

How long will I need to meet with a psychologist or psychiatrist?

We wish we could tell you that “x” number of appointments are all you need in order to heal, adjust to life transitions or losses, and curate the life you want. It would be amazing to be able to see into the future like that! Treatment and consultation durations are dependent on multiple factors: your goals, personal circumstances, life history, lifestyle factors, the frequency of appointments, and the types of counseling interventions needed.

We have clients that find solutions and satisfaction after a few months, others who meet with us for years at a time, and many who fall in the spectrum between. We also have clients who re-enter therapy for brief booster sessions (1-4 appointments) as needed throughout life in order to address specific issues or circumstances.

Please know this: our goal is to work ourselves out of a job – to teach you how to be with yourself, self-reflect, expand your perspective, respond to big emotions, and cope with tough challenges on your own. We want to be here while you need us while helping you no longer need us.

I want to clarify…

Should I take medication or start therapy?

Whether you should initiate therapy, or medication, or do both at the same time is a question best answered by you – after a comprehensive assessment by a licensed professional and your informed consent to the agreed upon procedure. Informed consent means that you receive a full disclosure about all your treatment options, their effectiveness, side effects, and alternatives. We want you to know the risks, benefits, and alternative choices that are available for your specific concerns and needs.

We offer holistic and integrative psychiatry services, which means that we consider multiple factors affecting your current concerns (e.g., health, lifestyle, goals, work and professional expectations, personal preferences, etc) and then recommend treatment options to help reach your goals as quickly and as naturally as possible. When medication is recommended, we often include a recommendation for therapy as well because research shows that the combination is most effective in achieving and sustaining long-term well-being.

How do I know you will keep my information private?

One of the many perks of seeing licensed psychologists and psychiatrists is a guarantee of confidentiality. We are bound by ethics codes and laws to protect your privacy.

There are some limits to your confidentiality, which we will discuss in depth during your first appointment. In brief, these include: suspected abuse of a child, dependent adult, or elder; threats of harm to yourself or others, or if the courts subpoena your records.

I want to go public with our relationship!

Can I leave a rating and review?

Absolutely! We welcome and appreciate any feedback that may help other prospective clients determine if the clinicians at Bamboo Center would be a good fit for them and their goals.

Please know that by leaving ratings and reviews, you disclose to the public that you, or someone you care for, received wellness services from us. As such, we recommend speaking in generalities and refrain from disclosing specific details of your care in order to maintain your privacy.

To protect your confidentiality and privacy, we will not love, like, or respond to the review. This is to comply with HIPPA, our commitment to discreteness, and to avoid confirming that we have any kind of relationship with you, a family member, or friend.

If you would like to read or leave a review, you can do so on Google or Yelp.

Can I follow you on social media?

Absolutely! We maintain professional social media pages on Instagram and Facebook.

To protect your confidentiality and privacy, we will not follow, friend, comment, respond, or otherwise interact with you, your family, or other clients. Please note, social media outlets are not appropriate or accessible outlets for contact, especially in an emergency.

I WANT TO BE THEIR CLIENT!

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