In-person in Houston, online across Texas • In-network with Aetna, BCBS, Cigna, UHC/Optum, Tricare, Curative, Oscar • Therapy in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi
After Hospitalization
Therapy After Hospitalization in Houston, TX
Discharge is not the end of an episode. It is the point at which a person returns to their life with the crisis contained but rarely understood, and the weeks that follow are among the most vulnerable in psychiatric care. What is usually offered at that point is monitoring. What is needed, in many cases, is treatment: sustained clinical work with what led to the hospitalization and what it interrupted.
Real Talk provides ongoing outpatient therapy after hospitalization, partial hospitalization programs, and intensive outpatient treatment, in person in Houston and, when the case allows, online across Texas. This is not a bridge service or a holding pattern. It is treatment itself, with doctoral-level psychologists prepared to protect stability and to become the patient's ongoing reference point, instead of referring them out at the first sign of trouble. We coordinate with psychiatrists, discharge planners, and treatment programs, and we are in network with major insurance plans.
To begin, request a session. If you are a discharge planner or case manager, our clinical director reviews each referral personally.
We are not equipped to treat acuity, which refers to the present moment: active suicidal intent, inability to maintain safety, a state that requires containment or twenty-four-hour structure. Acute conditions belong in a higher level of care, and when a patient of ours becomes acute, we say so and help arrange it. If you are in crisis now, call 911, call or text 988, or go to the nearest emergency room.
What we treat is complexity, which is something else. A complex case is one that requires work to keep stable, or one in which more than one thing is true at once: depression alongside a history of trauma, a bipolar diagnosis that took years to arrive, a personality organized around injuries, or a case that has never received one closed, agreed-upon diagnosis. Complexity is not imminent danger. Most complex patients are functioning, but still poorly served because their treatment requires someone able to think about the whole picture rather than treat one symptom per referral.
Outpatient psychotherapy is the level of care where complexity is actually worked through. The patients we serve after hospitalization are no longer acute. They are complex, and that is precisely what we are trained for.
Who This Is For
Adults discharged from inpatient psychiatric care who need ongoing psychological treatment. Patients completing partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient programs who need to replace that structure with regular, ongoing outpatient sessions. People whose hospitalization followed a crisis and who need a treatment in which what happened can be addressed. Patients with depression, bipolar illness, trauma, or personality difficulty for whom the crisis was one chapter of a longer history. And families and discharge planners seeking clinicians who will coordinate with the psychiatrist, the program, and the people involved.
How We Work With Hospitals and Referring Providers: When a patient comes to us from a hospital, a partial hospitalization program, an intensive outpatient program, or another clinician, coordination is our standard of care. With the patient's authorization, we confirm to the referring team that the patient began treatment, and we send brief reports about the therapy process. Every patient with a complex presentation at Real Talk is treated under the same standard: an identified prescriber of record, continuous attention to risk, and providers who are in contact with each other. Discharge planners and case managers can reach our clinical director directly at adriane@realtalkpsychology.com. We respond the same business day.
What We Pay Attention To
We pay attention to what the hospitalization interrupted and what it protected. We attend to the difference between stabilization and change, because leaving the hospital stable is not the same as understanding what led there. And we hold risk continuously, in a manner that does not convert the treatment into something the patient must manage the clinician through.
Why Doctoral Training Matters After Hospitalization: Doctoral training matters most when diagnostic questions remain open after discharge, when medication and psychotherapy must be coordinated, when risk must be assessed continuously, and when the presentation includes the layered history that led to hospitalization in the first place.
Our clinical director reads every inquiry and recommends a clinician within minutes on weekdays, hours on weekends.
How soon after discharge can therapy begin?
The period immediately after discharge is when treatment matters most and when it most often fails to start, so we prioritize these intakes and our clinical director reviews each one personally.
Do you replace my psychiatrist?
No. We provide the psychotherapy and coordinate with the psychiatrist who manages your medication. The two halves of the treatment work together, and we keep them talking to each other.
What if I am referring a patient or family member?
Discharge planners, case managers, and families can contact us directly. With the appropriate release, we confirm whether the patient connected and remains in treatment.
Do you coordinate with my psychiatrist?
Yes, as a standard. With your authorization, we contact your psychiatrist when treatment begins and stay in communication throughout. We consider your treatment one treatment, even when more than one professional holds part of it.
Is coordination with my other providers an extra cost?
Contacting your psychiatrist, sending the updates we describe here, and confirming to a referring provider that you arrived are all part of your care and are never charged. A small number of extended services fall outside insurance coverage, such as a written clinical summary prepared at your request. Those are $70 per 30 minutes, they are always optional, and you will be told the cost and asked to consent before it happens.
Andrew Solomon. Anatomy of Melancholy.
The New Yorker. 1998. Read here.
Elyn Saks. Successful and Schizophrenic.
The New York Times. 2013. Read here.