Ages
13 TO 17
60-minute
SESSIONS
$150
SELF-PAY
Free
15-MINUTE CALL
Plans we work with: Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, DMBA, EMI Health, PEHP, SelectHealth, UMR, UnitedHealthcare and University of Utah Health Plans, with TRICARE coming soon. For a minor the plan has to be the one your teen is covered under. Not every clinician is in network with every plan yet, and several who see teens are still being credentialed, so we check your plan against the clinician on the free call. Every clinician who sees teens also offers telehealth.
FROM YOUR SIDE OF IT
The door is closed more than it is open
Grades slid a letter and a half and nobody can point at when. You get one word answers, then a fight about the phone, then silence until dinner. You are not sure whether this is depression or whether it is being fifteen, and neither is anyone else.
Sometimes there is nothing obvious at all. They still get up, still go, still perform. In Utah County there is a particular version of this, where a kid looks fine on paper right up until the day they very much are not.
You are probably here because something crossed a line you did not know you had drawn.
WHAT WE WORK WITH
What brings teenagers in
Six things we see most in teenagers. This is not everything, and you do not have to fit the list to call.
What we treat
Anxiety and panic
School refusal, social anxiety, and the kind that only shows up as a stomach ache every Sunday night.
Depression
Including the version where they still function, still show up, and nobody outside the house can tell.
Trauma
Single incident and longer running. Brian Austin is an EMDRIA Certified Therapist. Brittany Taggart, Kristen Morgan, and Aubree Stock are EMDR trained.
Self image and social pressure
Appearance, performance, and comparison. Adults are quick to call this minor. Teenagers are not wrong to call it enormous.
Anger and shutdown
Reactions that arrive faster and larger than the moment called for, and the going quiet that usually follows.
Family conflict
The same argument on a loop, divorce, remarriage, and parenting that has to work across two houses.
THE FIRST SESSION
Four sentences is a normal start
A good first session with a fifteen year old is often four sentences long and none of them are the ones you were hoping for. That is not a wasted appointment. A teenager deciding whether this adult is safe is doing the work.
Your therapist will ask what your teen would change if they could change one thing. Teenagers almost always have an answer, and it is regularly not the one their parents expected.
Nobody will be asked to relitigate the fight that got you here.
Consent, in Utah
In Utah a parent or legal guardian consents to treatment for anyone under 18 and has rights to the record. Nothing in the table below changes that. What it does is set expectations with your teenager in front of you, so that nobody discovers a boundary later at the worst possible moment.
A teenager who believes every word goes straight to a parent will tell a therapist nothing worth hearing. A parent who is kept entirely in the dark cannot help. Here is how we hold both, and we say all of it out loud in the first session with you both in the room.
PRIVACY
What stays private, and what does not
In each pair below, what stays between your teen and their therapist comes first. What we will always bring to you follows it.
What stays between your teen and their therapist
What we will always bring to you
The ordinary content of sessions. What they are worried about, who they are fighting with, what they think of you that week.
Any plan to harm themselves, and any plan to harm someone else.
Ordinary teenage mistakes that carry no immediate danger.
Abuse or neglect. Utah requires us to report it and we will tell you we are doing so.
The pace. They get to decide what to bring up first and what waits.
Anything a court orders.
The exact words they use about you, your rules, and your house.
The general direction of the work, in enough detail that you can support it at home.
Friendships, crushes, and the parts of their life they are still working out.
Anything that puts them in immediate physical danger, including substance use at a level that is not safe.
WHEN YOU CALL
What actually happens when you call
The first call is fifteen minutes and it is free, and you can make it without your teenager knowing yet.
We want three things. Roughly what has been going on. What your week can hold, including whether your teen can get here after school. What insurance your teen is covered under, which we check while you are on the line. Then we tell you which clinician here fits, and when that person can actually see them.
If nobody here is the right fit, we will say so and point you somewhere else in Utah County. That happens, and it is a better outcome for your teenager than six wasted weeks.
Most teenagers start weekly. By session three or four you and the therapist should have a working direction, and you should be told what it is.
What the first call covers
What has been going on with your teenager, in whatever words you have for it.
What your week can actually hold, and which clinician has that slot.
Your insurance, checked while you are on the line, with the copay figure said out loud.
WHO YOU WOULD SEE
Two people here have spent careers on this
Emily Scoffield has spent twenty years with complex adolescents and families and is a Utah approved supervisor. Brian Austin has been practicing twelve years, sees teens from 16 up, and is an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and AAMFT Approved Supervisor, which matters when what a teenager is carrying is trauma rather than mood.
The others who see teenagers bring different training and different temperaments. Kristen Morgan works with children from age 6, teens, and adults. Brittany Taggart is EMDR and CAMS trained. Aubree Stock has worked in Utah's child welfare system since 2016.
A teenager who will not talk to one person will sometimes talk to another. That is a normal thing to switch, and we will not take it personally.
We also run a DBT skills group for teenagers whose emotions arrive at full volume, and a Gottman parenting group for parents of teens. Some families get further from the parenting group than from putting the teenager in a room, particularly when the fight is really about the household.
If you already know who you want, ask for them by name. If you do not, that is exactly what the fifteen minute call is for.
Emily Scoffield, LCSW · Children (6+), Teens, Adults, Couples, Families
Brian Austin, LCSW · Teens (16+), Adults, Older Adults, Couples
Kristen Morgan, LCSW · Children (6+), Teens, Adults, Families
Brittany Taggart, LCSW · Children (6+), Teens, Adults, Couples, Families
Aubree Stock, CSW · All Ages, Couples, Families
WHAT IT COSTS
What it costs
Sessions run 60 minutes. Self-pay is $150.
On insurance you pay your plan's copay, and we will tell you that number on the free call instead of letting you find out afterwards.
TRICARE is coming soon. We are finishing credentialing now, so call and we will tell you where it stands. Until then, military families can use self-pay and ask us about a superbill.
Good Faith Estimate
If you are uninsured or paying out of pocket, federal law gives you the right to a written estimate of what your care will cost before it starts. Ask us for one and we will put it in writing. Read how it works.