Down-to-Earth, Evidence-Based Therapy
Personalized, expert mental health care for healthcare providers, those with medical challenges, and anxious folks. Let’s help you exhale.
Meet Dr. Mark Versella
Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Versella. I’m a licensed clinical psychologist in Philadelphia whose goal is to make mental health care incredibly effective for you without it feeling stuffy, sterile, or mysterious.
I’ve spent 10+ years working throughout the medical system, whether it’s in my current position as faculty at Rutgers - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School training resident physicians, as a primary care-mental health fellow at the Philadelphia VA, or as a collaborating psychologist in primary care, subspecialty outpatient settings and inpatient medicine. Throughout all of that, I’ve been lucky enough to speak to folks from all walks of life looking for mental healthcare for the first time. One of the most consistent things I’ve heard from patients is how unapproachable and daunting going to therapy can seem. In my little corner of the world, I’d like to change that.
More than anything, I want therapy with me to seem like you’re working with a real, three-dimensional person who you can both feel safe with and be confident that they know their stuff. That starts with showing up as me, without pretense or BS. I want you to know me, so you can make the call as to whether I’m the right person to help you. This is a practice where your individual goals and perspectives are honored, that’s open, safe, and inclusive to all people, and where your needs are matched with the best treatments science has to offer.
Ultimately, I want the experience of working with me to provide a sense of relief from what you struggle with, while making the process meaningful and joyful. That feeling of exhaling when you finally go on vacation - the last day of school, the first day at the beach, or just the moment when you can close your laptop for a while - that’s where I want to get you to.
And I don’t want it to take forever! As much as I hope you enjoy working with me week to week, we all live busy lives. I want to make myself obsolete as quickly as I can, and I do that by trying to not just help you get better, but teach you along the way why therapy works the way it does so you can be your own therapist long after we’ve finished working together.
Let’s hang out and make your life better.
What I Do
Big picture, I work primarily with adults, provide individual therapy, and treat a wide range of mental health difficulties. I specialize in taking care of folks who have both medical and mental health challenges, as well as medical professionals, which has grown out of 10+ years training in and leading treatment teams in various medical settings, from primary care offices to inpatient medical and psychiatric units and beyond. I’m also an expert in treating anxiety, trauma, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
I primarily work with folks in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with a specific focus in the Philadelphia metro area. I’m also able to see people throughout all PSYPACT participating states via telehealth video.
I’m an out-of-network provider and do not accept insurance directly. I am easily able to provide paperwork that you can submit to your insurance company for possible reimbursement if you’d like, and would be happy to talk through what that process looks like if I can be at all helpful.
Why Work with Me
There are approximately five trillion therapists advertising their services on the internet. For such a consequential decision as to who you trust with your mental health, how you go about picking someone from the lot is not exactly straightforward. Moreover, there’s not a mental health provider out there who is the right person for everyone, and that includes me. While you’re here, I’d like to make things as straightforward as possible. Here’s why I might be the right fit for you.
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My full-time gig is the Director of Behavioral Health and Behavioral Science Educator within Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine. Work with me if you want someone who doesn’t have to be taught what a call schedule is or how corporatized medicine can fast-track burnout. I also understand the licensing healthcare professionals have and do my best to mitigate them: I don’t bill insurance directly, and I keep documentation to a minimum.
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I’ve spent nearly a decade training and practicing in primary care, where my clients were also getting treated for a physical health challenge. As a health psychologist, I deploy behavioral interventions that assist your medical care (e.g., insomnia, chronic pain) or address the health anxiety and stress that comes with coping with an illness. I’m also very comfortable working with persistent and debilitating medical issues, having spent time on a team for home-bound individuals and in an ALS clinic for patients and their families as they navigated the end-of-life process. I will not know every disease process, but I am quite skilled in getting myself up to speed. With your permission, I’ll coordinate with your medical team so your mental and medical care are in lockstep with each other.
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This may be strange for a therapist to say, but I find it so rewarding to working with folks who struggle with anxiety and trauma. Every therapist has their niche, and for me, it’s a joy to puzzle out how to develop a healthier relationship to your thinking or construct just the right activity to test out whether the concern that’s haunting you will come to pass, and if so, whether you’re capable of handling it. I’ve use the treatments that best address anxiety (generalized, social, panic attacks, etc), OCD, and PTSD: Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Prolonged Exposure (PE) and Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and exposure-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
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We’re all so unbelievably busy, and having logistics stand between you and the help that you need can be so dispiriting. To the absolute best of my abilities I strive to remove that pain point. I see patients over telehealth video, so long as you’re in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or any PSYPACT-participating states, so you don’t need to leave work or your home to come and see me. I’m available during the evening and on the weekend if the 9-5 window doesn’t fit for you. If you can’t meet every week because of the demands of your job, I’m happy to make the pace of our meetings malleable so you still get the help that you need. If at all possible, I want to make this work for you.
Interested in Working Together?
For what it’s worth, finding the right therapist is both a lot of work and emotionally daunting. In whatever way I can, I’d like to do my best to take a bit of that pressure off. Let’s find a time to chat and talk over what you need, how I can help, and give you the chance to see if I’m the right fit to help you. Here’s how it’ll work:
Fill out the form here or click the link below to reach out in whatever way feels comfortable. Just let me know that you’d like to touch base.
We schedule a phone call where you tell me what you’re hoping to get help with, I tell you a bit about myself, and you can ask me whatever questions would assist you in making the best decision for you.
If you think we’re a good match, we schedule a first session and get right to work. If you’d rather go another direction, I’d happily be a resource to connect you with help elsewhere if you’d like the assistance. No pressure: my mission is to be helpful in whatever way makes sense for you.
