Approach

Your decision to seek counseling is a positive step towards change.

During our time together, I will work hard to create a safe space where you are able to ask important questions and engage in thoughtful, nonjudgmental conversations that lead to new insight. Discussions of how your past informs the present will be important, as well as here-and-now strategies that may include mindfulness, problem solving, behavioral activation or cognitive behavioral interventions. As we work together I will check in periodically with you about how we might improve our dialogue to achieve your goals.

Experience

I have counseled clients in clinic, hospital and private practice settings since 2002. I see individual adults and couples struggling with depression, anxiety, and adjustment to life transitions such as parenthood, career change, relationship problems, joblessness and twenty-something individuation. I also specialize in perinatal depression/anxiety and stress related to infertility. I have ten years’ experience working with couples using assisted reproduction including IUI, IVF and third party (sperm/egg donor, gestational carrier). I have master’s degrees in social work (MSW) and public health (MPH in maternal/child health).

I have also been involved with and published in the area of reproductive mental health research especially regarding the implementation and effectiveness of collaborative care models.  More recently I was a care manager trainer on a large-scale collaborative care trial providing psychiatric and mental health care to patients in rural settings.

During my early career I spent five years working abroad in Indonesia and Ethiopia managing reproductive health projects that expanded family planning access and educated women on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. These formative experiences inform my therapy practice and worldview.