Psychological Services
When someone experiences stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, or one of the other hurdles that life can throw your way, it is not unusual to feel stuck. Feeling perplexed or a sense of coming apart are normal. We are passionate about encouraging growth, providing optimism, and promoting good mental health through therapy and counseling during these challenging times. Our clients include children, adolescents, adults, and families, and we aim to help them find the courage to face and resolve present and past problems, as well as pending transitions and upcoming changes they anticipate. We are aware that there is no single approach that will apply to everyone, and hence our clients and therapists work with each other in creating a customizable and personalized therapeutic program that best meets their needs. The goal is to help clients work their way from where they are today to where they envision themselves in the future.
Services & Therapies Offered
Therapy and assessment for every client are unique and may include the following. This list is not exhaustive and provides a brief overview of some of our more common services sought after and provided:
Play Therapy
Play is how not only children, but also adults, communicate in various ways – be it through their body language, toys, things built, voice inflection, characters role played, or other play themes. This approach can help uncover current, past, or future difficulties, process information, as well as provide unique ways of coping. It looks different for everyone. Sometimes this includes sand-play, puppets, playing games (including video games), building with clay, or coloring, and drawing to name a few.
Traditional Psychotherapy
The various orientations and approaches we use are tailored and calibrated to the client. Most of the time, clients meet with a psychotherapist once or twice a week, for approximately 55 minutes. Generally, the client is taught skills to handle emotions, thoughts, and behavioral patterns that are bringing them to therapy, and develop ways to manage and cope with long-standing and daily challenges related to them.
Sometimes psychotherapy lasts several weeks, when addressing a short-term goal, or can be a few months to years, in the case of more long-term goals. Our therapists take pride in incorporating empirically supported treatment modalities throughout the course of treatment, and especially ensuring that all treatment is tailored to their client’s unique needs. We check-in with the client to ensure treatment is going well and as expected, and if not, how to best move forward.
Psychological Assessment
This process allows us to provide either a brief or in-depth assessment of one’s current mental health. While one of the biggest referrals we receive is for ruling-out an autism spectrum diagnosis, we also assess for ADHD, OCD, anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, and other mental health diagnoses in toddlers through adults. We begin by taking background data to determine what questions need or want to be answered.
Next, we administer various tests in an effort to answer the questions that initially brought you to an assessment. Then we score those tests, write up a report, and provide you with feedback as well as recommendations on what might be appropriate next steps. We also help navigate implementing these steps as best as we can afterward for you, as continuity of care is of utmost importance to us. This process from start to end typically takes 4-8 weeks.
Parent Child Interaction Therapy
This form of therapy for children aims to improve the relationship between the parent and the child by encouraging and coaching the parents on the way they interact with their child.
Certain skills are taught, based on a collaboration of therapist and parent goals, to parents in order for them to foster a strong and healthy relationship with their child. At the same time, the child’s social behavior is improved and their targeted behaviors are shaped to meet therapeutic goals.
Perinatal Mental Health and Parent Support Program
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are common, yet often go unrecognized during family planning, pregnancy, and postpartum. If you are coping with challenges adjusting to parenting, stress, loss, grief, depression, anxiety, or trauma, you are not alone and help is available.
The Perinatal Mental Health and Support (PMHPS) Program offers psychotherapy services by therapists who specialize in this unique time of life. Our goal is to increase awareness of, prevent, treat, and provide support for mental health and parenting challenges during the reproductive and parenting years. Click here to learn more about the PMHPS Program and our PMHPS Team.