{"id":11002,"date":"2026-09-29T11:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/?p=11002"},"modified":"2026-09-29T11:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T11:30:15","slug":"psychotherapie-nach-erreichen-der-hoechstgrenzen-geht-das","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/psychotherapie-nach-erreichen-der-hoechstgrenzen-geht-das\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychotherapy after reaching the maximum limits \u2013 is that possible?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The psychotherapy guidelines stipulate specific maximum limits for the various forms of therapy. This can lead patients to believe that therapy must necessarily end once these limits are reached, or that they must wait two years before starting a new therapy. Neither of these assumptions is correct. Under certain conditions, psychotherapy can continue even beyond the specified maximum limit.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>There is also no general two-year waiting period for starting new psychotherapy. The following article explains when continuing therapy beyond the maximum duration may be possible and what the actual significance of the two-year period is.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The psychotherapy guidelines specify in detail how psychotherapeutic care for those with statutory health insurance is to be provided. Sections 28 et seq. of these guidelines also mention specific numbers of therapy hours, which are often misunderstood as fixed maximum limits. In fact, these hours are intended only to determine when a treatment success can generally be expected with a given method. Therefore, the number of hours does not mean that therapy must necessarily end after the prescribed number of hours has been reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The courts have also explicitly recognized that treatment beyond these limits is possible. The Hessian State Social Court made this particularly clear in a 2016 ruling (Judgment of July 7, 2016 \u2013 L 8 KR 300\/14 \u2013). In the case at hand, an insured woman had received a total of 355 hours of psychoanalysis. The health insurance company covered 267 of these individual sessions. Legal proceedings ensued regarding the remaining 88 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In its ruling of July 7, the Hessian State Social Court clarified that the guidelines regarding the maximum duration of treatment are target guidelines within which treatment success can generally be expected. The wording that the maximum limits must be adhered to &quot;in principle&quot; indicates that exceptions are permissible. These maximum limits are based on typical case groups. In individual cases, it can be examined whether continuing treatment despite exceeding the regular maximum limit is justified. In this regard, it is particularly important to provide a comprehensible explanation of why further treatment is necessary in this specific case and why discontinuing therapy at this point would not be justifiable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The health insurance company must examine these individual case questions. It may obtain an expert opinion in this process. If continued treatment is medically necessary, a corresponding application should be submitted. The fact that the standard maximum limit has been reached does not automatically mean that further treatment is ruled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#039;s a second myth surrounding psychotherapy that doesn&#039;t stand up to scrutiny. It&#039;s often claimed that a new course of therapy can be requested if the previous one ended more than two years ago. However, this is incorrect. There is no general two-year waiting period for requesting new psychotherapy. As early as 2016, the Federal Joint Committee (which issued the psychotherapy guidelines) determined that there is no waiting period for new psychotherapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The two-year period, however, has a different, more technical meaning: If a new short-term therapy is requested within two years of the completion of a previous therapy, the application must be submitted to an expert according to the applicable regulations. The two-year period is therefore not a waiting period, but rather pertains to the procedure by which a decision is made regarding a new therapy application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Therefore, the two-year period is not the decisive criterion for the question of whether an ongoing therapy can be continued beyond the regular maximum limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you, as a patient, are concerned about not being able to continue your therapy, you should discuss extension options with your therapist as early as possible. This may require additional justification. However, you should not be discouraged by maximum limits or two-year time limits.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Die Psychotherapie-Richtlinie sieht f\u00fcr die verschiedenen Therapieformen bestimmte H\u00f6chstgrenzen vor. F\u00fcr Betroffene kann deshalb der Eindruck entstehen, dass eine Therapie nach Erreichen dieser Grenze zwingend beendet werden muss oder dass zun\u00e4chst zwei Jahre gewartet werden muss, bevor eine neue Therapie begonnen werden kann. Beides ist so nicht richtig. Unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen kann eine Psychotherapie auch&hellip;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"inhaltsbereich":[],"projektbezug":[69],"class_list":["post-11002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","projektbezug-betroffenenrecht","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11003,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11002\/revisions\/11003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11002"},{"taxonomy":"inhaltsbereich","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/inhaltsbereich?post=11002"},{"taxonomy":"projektbezug","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kwb-stiftung.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/projektbezug?post=11002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}