What I treat · Personality disorders · Madison
Personality disorders therapy for Madison, Wisconsin.
DBT-informed therapy for personality disorders for Madison residents, with Wisconsin-licensed Amber Miller, MSed., LPC. Telehealth statewide, in-person at the Superior office. Most insurance accepted, including BadgerCare and Medicaid.
Madison's mental-health system is overloaded in the same way every major college city's is. Wait times at private practices and at UHS on the UW-Madison campus run from weeks to months. Telehealth with a Wisconsin-licensed therapist outside Madison gets you a sooner first session, the same therapist year-round including over breaks, and no per-session campus charge if you are on insurance. The other Madison-area schools (Edgewood, Madison College, Madison Area Technical College) are served the same way. Telehealth from the near-east side, the near-west side, Monroe Street, Fitchburg, Middleton, and Sun Prairie all works identically.
What Personality disorders therapy looks like
Clients I see with a personality-disorder diagnosis have often been treated badly by parts of the mental-health system. The label can become a reason to be dismissed, even by therapists. I do not do that. I treat the diagnosis as one piece of information among many about a real person sitting in front of me.
Borderline-spectrum work is the most common version of this in my practice. It is workable. The long arc is months and years, not weeks. The day-to-day work is dialectical behavioral skills paired with the slower person-centered work of figuring out what the patterns are protecting.
How we work on it
Dialectical behavioral skills come in heavily. Person-centered work holds the room while we build trust. Some weeks the work is symptom-focused; some weeks it is the older, slower work underneath.
With a clear personality-disorder diagnosis, the medication picture often runs alongside. I am not a prescriber, so if medication is part of your picture I will work alongside your psychiatrist.
A personality-disorder diagnosis is a description of patterns, not a sentence. The patterns formed for reasons. The reasons are workable.
How sessions work for Madison clients
Madison is too far from the Superior office for regular in-person sessions, so this is a telehealth-only relationship. That works as well for this kind of work as in-person. We pick a regular weekly slot and keep it.
If you are at a college in or near Madison
Madison and the surrounding area is home to UW-Madison, Edgewood, and Madison College. I see students from each, regardless of which campus you are on. Telehealth from a dorm or apartment works the same way it works from home. Sessions are confidential. The full angle on student work is on the college student page.
Insurance and cost in Madison
Wisconsin BadgerCare, Medicaid, Medicare, and most major commercial insurance in Madison are in-network. Out-of-pocket is $125 per 50 minutes session. Full detail on the insurance and fees page.
What to do next
If this read like something you recognize, the next step is to schedule the consultation or intake session. The free 15 minutes consult gives us both a sense of whether we would work well together before you book the first paid session. Text, call, or use the form, whichever is easiest.