Important Notice:  Rate Increase Effective January 1, 2025

As of January 1, 2025, in accordance with the Association of Psychologists of NS recommended rate, our fee for psychological services will increase to $225 for individual counselling sessions and $235 for couples or family counselling sessions (per 50-minute session).

Our counselling fees are based on a 50-minute session (+10-minute administration time, this administrative time applies to sessions of other durations as well) and are guided by recommendations of our provincial psychology association (APNS.ca). Currently, psychologist fees are $210 for individual counselling sessions and $220 for couples or family counselling sessions. Our clinical social worker fees are $180 for individual counselling sessions and $190 for couples or family counselling sessions. These fees also apply to paperwork (letters, forms, reports), consultations, and external meetings requested on your behalf, with the exception of legal reports (billed at $225 per hour) and court testimony (billed at $330 per hour). 

Our psychological assessment fees are determined by the type of assessment required.  The type, process, and cost of the assessment will be determined and agreed on between the client and practitioner before the assessment begins.   Please contact our clinic for further information.

Private practice services are not covered by MSI. Many personal health insurance plans cover the full or partial cost of services. Some government agencies (e.g., Veterans Affairs, RCMP, Indigenous – First Nations and Inuit Health Services) may also cover the cost of services. We encourage you to check with your agency or insurance provider to determine if you have coverage. We directly bill insurance companies and third-party agencies where possible. A detailed invoice is provided on the day of your appointment; where direct payment is required, cash, debit, Visa, MasterCard, Amex and e-transfer are accepted. 

Please provide a minimum of 24-hours notice (or by 12 noon on Friday for Monday appointments) if you need to change or cancel an appointment. This allows us to offer the appointment to someone on our waiting list. If an appointment is missed or cancelled without sufficient notice, it will be billed in full and cannot be billed directly to insurance or third party providers. For extenuating circumstances, such as a a medical emergency or power outage in the city, we require you to contact us to determine if fee will be waived.

We are pleased to offer the option of virtual and/or phone sessions where preferred and deemed appropriate. When scheduling your appointment, please inform us of your preference for an in-person or telehealth appointment. Please note that covid-19 guidelines may impact availability of in-person appointments.  

Our office is accessible. There are elevators in the main lobby. There is an accessible and gender-neutral washroom located directly outside our office (to the left of the  office entrance).

For evening and weekend appointments, should the main building entrance be locked, please use the intercom on the right-side main entrance door. There are several options around the building, including paid parking lots at Alderney Landing and on Queen Street, as well as on-street parking.

Intake forms will be sent to you via email prior to your first appointment (if you require paper forms, please arrive 15-minutes prior to your initial session to complete the forms). During your initial session, your therapist will discuss the intake forms with you and answer any related questions. They will ask questions about the areas you are seeking to address in therapy to ensure that they are able to assist you in these areas, and they will work with you to formulate the treatment goals and plan. We understand the importance of a good therapeutic relationship and will work with you to facilitate referral to another clinician if desired or needed. 

At Dartmouth Psychological Services (DPS) we are committed to protecting your privacy and to using technology that gives you a secure on-line experience. You can travel through most of our website without giving any information about yourself. However, sometimes we do need information to provide services that you request, and this statement of privacy explains data collection and use in those situations.

This privacy policy governs the use of all information collected by DPS including that collected on this website.

DPS will comply with Canadian legislation of standards for the collection, use and disclosure of information pertaining to any staff or individual served by DPS.

In General

The collection of personal information by DPS is limited to the type and amount of information necessary for the given purpose. You will know of, and consent to, the collection, use and/or disclosure of your personal information. This information will not be used or disclosed for purposes other than that which it was collected, except with your written consent. Safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information shall be implemented to protect personal information.

We will provide access to your complete personal information file upon receiving your written request with the possible exception that ethically, it would be harmful to yourself or others to do so.

The Proprietor is responsible for training staff and volunteers regarding appropriate procedures for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. He/she is responsible will receive and respond to complaints and/or inquiries regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. Please see the contact page for phone and mailing information.

Collection of Personal Information

DPS will request personal information from individuals for the purposes of:

Assessing eligibility for and providing services offered by DPS: Obtaining statistical information for use by DPS for Customer Service and Product research and Development; Hiring staff and other contractors necessary to conduct the work of DPS; Investigating complaints regarding the conduct and/or actions of a representative of DPS. The Proprietor will ensure members are informed of the purposes of the collection of the personal information when the data is collected.

Browsing and Cookies

DPS does not use cookie technology as part of our website’s statistical reporting. A cookie is a small piece of information sent by a website that is saved on your hard disk by your computer’s browser. It holds information a site may need to gather website statistical data, such as which pages are visited, what is downloaded, the internet provider’s domain name and country that our visitors come from (e.g. ‘excite.com,’ or mcmaster.ca’). Cookies can also record the addresses of sites visited immediately before, and after, coming to a site.

We do, however, use standard web server log files to help us count visitors and evaluate our site’s technical capacity. We use this information to find out how many people visit www.jmcpsychology.ca, help us arrange the pages in the most user-friendly way, keep the site browser-friendly, and to make our pages more useful to our visitors. We record information on site traffic but not information on individual visitors to our site, so no information about you in particular will be kept or used.

On-Line Surveys

If you choose to participate in our on-line surveys, this response will be recorded as anonymous statistics only.

E-Mail

When you send us an e-mail, we use your e-mail address to thank you for your comment and/or reply to your question, and we will store your communication and our reply in case we correspond further. Beyond our initial reply, we will never use your e-mail address to send you any unsolicited message or information, nor will we share it with or sell it to anyone else for such use.

When you request information or other services, we use your e-mail address and any other information you give us to provide you with the information or other services you requested until you ask us to stop (using the ‘unsubscribe’ instructions provided with each e-mail). We will not share it with or sell, rent or lease it to any third party for such use.

Linking to Other Sites

Please remember that should you use a link to go from DPS to another site, our website Privacy Policy is no longer in effect. Your browsing and interaction on any other website, including any site that has a link on this sute, is subject to the rules and policies of that site. We encourage you to read the rules and policies of the sites you visit to further understand their procedures for collecting, using, and disclosing personal information.