Evidence-based therapies, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, are psychotherapies that have been scientifically supported in treating anxiety disorders, ADHD, stress, health conditions, and more. Through randomized controlled clinical trials, these trusted (not experimental) therapies have been found to help children, teens, and adults have a higher quality of life and reach their aspirations. ICPS has specialized in these therapies using an action-oriented and multiculturally competent yet humble approach. Our first step is to truly listen to your/your child’s concerns and together develop a structured treatment plan that is engaging for you or your child. Our approach helps increase multiple areas of functioning (psychological, academic, workplace) because we specialize in both mental health and career/academic development, which are often inextricably linked.
We offer the following evidence-based therapies informed by both our research and practice experience:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): CBT helps individuals identify how their automatic thoughts and strongly held beliefs impact their emotions and behaviors. By helping individuals address their faulty beliefs or automatic thoughts, a CBT therapist helps individuals manage their emotions and behaviors. CBT also targets maladaptive behaviors, or behaviors that are unhelpful, through behavior modification. For example, Exposure with Response Prevention can be used to address avoidance of feared situations or stimuli. For children and teens, we work with parents by using applied behavior analysis methods to modify unhelpful behaviors. In addition, we aim to help you or your child identify effective, active coping skills for emotional distress. CBT is the gold standard for treating most Anxiety (Generalized Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Phobias) and Depressive Disorders for children, teens, and adults. We specialize in using CBT for these and other disorders (e.g, ADHD) that can co-occur with Anxiety and Depression. As needed with younger children, we incorporate Play Therapy in CBT.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): ACT helps individuals who experience persistent avoidance of emotions and “stuckness” with thoughts or beliefs. ACT aims to provide a sense of radical acceptance of unwanted thoughts, feelings, and situations. ACT also helps individuals “live up” to their personal core values. ACT incorporates six skills, which we teach to clients, that have helped treat ADD or ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, Mood Disorders, and more.
Multicultural Therapy (MT): Multicultural therapy can be incorporated into all treatments and coaching with a therapist having the proper knowledge and skills to do so. Multicultural counseling aims to support individuals’ in their social identity development and sociocultural values identification. It can also help individuals from underrepresented social groups (e.g., self-identified African American, Asian American, Latinx, LGBTQ+ individuals) cope with experiences of discrimination and prejudice and access personal and cultural strengths. This form of therapy can help individuals express their true voice and identities while finding ways to enact social change, if desired.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT): CPT has been used to treat traumatic stress disorders through the use of cognitive restructuring and appropriate processing of a traumatic event. It helps to address faulty beliefs and “stuck points” resulting from a traumatic event. Through appropriate exposure techniques, CPT can also help trauma survivors address conditioned behavioral responses from the trauma. CPT can help individuals who are survivors of sexual, physical, emotional, or war-related traumas.
Interpersonal Therapy (IPT): IPT has been used to help individuals address mental health issues that simultaneously impact relationships. IPT is a skill-based therapy that helps individuals improve their interactions and relationships with others, ultimately with the aim of improving mental health symptoms.
Career Counseling and Coaching: We use multiple career and leadership development theories, like Social Cognitive Career Theory, as specialists in this area. These theories inform both our counseling or coaching approach. Career counseling is provided for those who need both mental health and career support. Coaching can be provided to those who simply need support only in terms of career or leadership development. We aim to help individuals identify their professional values/identity; concrete and specific goals; and methods to reach those concrete goals. We offer research-based guidance, tools, and resources on how to achieve career or leadership goals. We often use career assessments and exploratory exercises to guide this process.
Life Coaching: For individuals who are seeking a trusted advisor and facilitator of personal development, we offer life coaching. Life coaching helps individuals arrive at their own solutions and decisions, and it is often reserved for individuals who are not experiencing mental health concerns. Because we are trained in psychology and personal and professional development, we integrate this in our coaching work.
Via counseling, we have helped thousands of children, teens, and adults individuals with the following concerns:
- Managing ADHD symptoms in order to achieve concrete academic, workplace, or mental health goals
- Managing significant fluctuations in mood and treating underlying triggers of depression or mood disorder symptoms
- Managing anxiety symptoms utilizing effective methods that simultaneously translate to increased career and academic functioning
- Processing trauma and its impact in a safe and empowering setting
- Selecting an appropriate career that is a suitable fit based on research-informed variables predictive of career satisfaction and longevity
- Clarifying next steps in a career or academic trajectory with an informed perspective and input from a trusted advisor
- Developing career or academic satisfaction through cognitive, behavioral, and emotional strategies
- Increasing psychological resilience in workplace or academic settings that generate psychological distress
- Increasing professional skills to succeed in today’s workforce and academic institutions