Scope of Practice

This page says plainly what Mended Mind Coaching is, who we work well with, and where we are not the right fit. We would rather you know all of it before you contact us than find out partway in.

What we are

We are a mental health coaching practice, registered in New York and working with clients across the United States, Canada, and internationally by video call. We work exclusively with Jehovah’s Witnesses, which means you never have to explain your beliefs or translate what matters to you before you can get to what you came to talk about.

Deseree Maes leads the coaching. She holds a Master’s degree in psychology and has worked in mental health since 2003. She trains every coach on our team personally.

We are coaches, not therapists

Nobody on our team holds a clinical license, and we say so plainly to every client before they book. That is not a technicality we are working around. It shapes what we can and cannot do.

We do not diagnose. We do not prescribe or advise on medication. We do not provide therapy, and we do not describe what we do as treatment for any condition. If you are looking for a licensed therapist or a psychiatrist, we are not that, and we will say so rather than take you on.

Who we work well with

We work best with people who are managing. You may be struggling, but life is still running. You are working, raising a family, keeping up with what is in front of you.

We also work with people having a harder time than that, as long as there is other care and other people around them. In that situation we are one support among several, never the only one.

Those two paths are the rule, and the second one is the part people miss. What decides it is not how hard things are. It is who else is in the room.

Where we are not the right fit

Where someone is actively suicidal, we will only work alongside a psychiatrist or doctor, and we will never be the sole party responsible for anyone’s care.

We have turned down work on this basis and we will do it again. If that is where you are right now, it is not a door closing. It means the first call belongs to a doctor or a crisis line, and we will do what we can to help you find the right person. We have sat with people while they made that call.

The same is true anywhere the tools we have are not the ones you need. If we think that partway through working together, we will tell you rather than keep going.

We are not an emergency service

Our contact form and our inbox are not monitored around the clock, and we are not on call. We typically respond within 24 hours, and we try to be faster when something reads as urgent, but we cannot promise a response time and we will not pretend otherwise.

Working alongside other care

We are not anti-medication. Plenty of the people we work with see a doctor or a psychiatrist as well, and that is a good thing rather than a complication. We would rather be one part of what is helping you than the whole of it.

If we think you would be better served by someone else, we will say so, and we will help you work out what to actually say to them. That last step is the one most referrals skip, and it is the reason a lot of them go nowhere.

Clients under 18

We work with people under 18 only with a parent or guardian’s written consent, and a parent is present in session. The parent completes their own form before the young person completes theirs.

Insurance

We cannot bill insurance. Our work is called coaching for licensing reasons and is not a billable clinical service, and our client base is international, which puts direct billing out of reach regardless. Some clients in the United States use HSA or FSA funds.

If you have a question about any of this

Ask us before you book rather than after. We would rather spend a consultation telling you we are not the right fit than take money for work that was never going to help.