The Brookline Center for Community Mental Health provides outstanding, affordable mental health care and community-based social services that help individuals and families lead healthier, safer, and fuller lives while building the strongest, healthiest community possible.
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Services Offered
Individual Counseling The Brookline Center is committed to helping people regain health and stability. Our experienced, caring clinicians understand, diagnose and treat mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, grief, eating disorders, and trauma.
Couples & Family Services The Brookline Center helps couples and families build or restore positive, caring relationships, even in challenging times.
Good relationships help us feel appreciated, loved, safe, and supported. Yet every relationship takes tending, and achieving good communication is essential. Sometimes, the situations couples and families face can be destabilizing: Divorce, physical infirmity, addiction, abuse, loss, self-harm, mood disorders, and mental illness can impact everyone in the family or relationship. Caregiving brings its own special challenges.
Group Counseling The Brookline Center's extensive group therapy program offers warm, welcoming support for a wide range of mental health and personal challenges. Our experienced clinicians facilitate dozens of groups, each with its own focus. In a group, members can process their experiences, practice new skills and ways of thinking, and provide and receive helpful feedback.
Fees and Payment
Fees For Brookline residents, we keep fees as low as possible so that cost won't be a barrier to care. For those living outside Brookline, we may offer some fee reductions for particular services. The intake coordinator can explain the fees associated with your care.
Insurance & Financial Assistance Many of our services-including individual and group therapy-are covered by insurance, including MassHealth and Medicare. Other services may be free or offered on a sliding scale. Services that are not covered by insurance are considered "fee-for-service" and are paid directly by clients or client families.
As a new client, if you do not have insurance or adequate coverage, our registration and billing office staff can help you understand payment options and apply for financial assistance at the time of your first appointment. Once you are a client, if you need to access financial assistance, please speak with your therapist.
Payment If you have health insurance, please bring your insurance card with you to your first appointment. The Brookline Center will submit your coverage claim on your behalf. You may be responsible for co-pays or deductibles, depending on your insurance plan. For co-pays and other service payments, we accept cash, check, and major credit cards.
This is a non-profit agency.
Services Offered To: Adults Couples Teens Children
Special Groups: Bilingual
Payment: Sliding Scale Medicare Medicaid
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Qualifying for assistance from Massachusetts' program usually depends on the severity of your condition and financial circumstance. Read our full guide to Massachusetts' program.
A community counseling agency is a group therapy practice that offers affordable mental health services. Most are independent non-profit agencies, state agencies, or publicly-funded agencies. A few may restrict who is eligible for services, so it is a good idea to check when you call.
Community counseling agencies are generally more affordable than other therapy providers, but how much more affordable they are will depend on whether you qualify for a discount or sliding scale fee (or if they accept your insurance). Many, but not all, have a policy that they won't turn away anyone due to inability to pay. You should ask about their fees when you first call.
Expect to talk to kind people who want to help you find the care you need. Most community agencies strive to connect you with a live person within 24 hours, if not immediately. If you're asked to hold or leave a message, don't give up; just leave a message and wait. You should hear back pretty quickly.
Most agencies try to set up an initial assessment appointment within a week (some do within 24 hours), though the waitlist to start therapy is usually longer—about a few weeks on average. If you're not eligible or if the agency is not right for you, it's usually still worth it to call or drop in, because staff are knowledgeable about local options and can often refer you to one.