A GoodTherapy.org News Summary

In the mental health professions, scores of conventions and symposiums take place each year, in fields from psychology to psychiatry, social work to school counseling, and everything in between. Events take place within the contexts of academia, as well as the professional world. The annual meeting and convention circuit has been taking on more new causes for congregating lately, though, and the First World Congress on Positive Psychology is a great example of the emergence of new and potentially powerful events.

The Congress took place in Philadelphia, sometimes hailed as the “birthplace of positive psychology.” The event aims to bring together mental health professionals interested in the tenets of positive psychology, which include a focus on the good things and upward trends in individual lives and the world at large, and which embrace a holistic and compassionate approach to therapy. Since its inception, positive psychology has sparked new research initiatives, scientific and academic journals, and specialized degree programs. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Minneapolis Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

A GoodTherapy.org News Update

In the mental health care professions, there is a vast collection of specialties ranging from a focus on specific events or periods in life to different kinds of care. The great diversity of concentrations and applications within the field can achieve great things for clients and helps to propel the industry toward greater breakthroughs with collaboration and the benefits of a variety of perspectives. But when it comes to regulation surrounding mental health care, the distinctions between titles, degrees, and licensure can sometimes get caught up in misunderstandings or misapplications by legislators. One of the largest hubs of mental health care legislation in the United States is the Medicare program, which aims to provide services to many financially disadvantaged citizens, especially the elderly.

Until recently, America’s rural areas were faced with a piece of Medicare regulation that didn’t particularly make sense for their unique situations. The rules for the program stated that only psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and clinical nurse specialists were able to bill Medicare for their services. While this may seem perfectly agreeable in many major metropolitan areas, a great deal of out-of-the-way places across the nation struggled to reconcile the rule with the fact that there simply weren’t any professionals with those specific credentials in their area. Rather, they relied on family and marriage therapists as well as licensed professional counselors to provide quality mental health care. Read the rest of this entry

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Westlake Village Bureau - All Rights Reserved.

By Noah Rubinstein, LMFT, Executive Director

How Not to Market Your Therapy Practice :)

Having years of experience learning to market my own practice, combined with detailed data of what works in a GoodTherapy.org profile and what doesn’t work, I feel uniquely positioned to give you a head start toward drawing people to your practice. Many of you are experienced at marketing and may find some of my recommendations painfully obvious. I nonetheless encourage you to read through my suggestions to see if there’s some new element you might integrate with what you are already doing. I also encourage you to take a long reflective look at what you write in your profile. Just as the therapy profession requires therapists to self-reflect, to gain self-awareness, and to do their own therapy, I find that marketing is also a powerful window to the soul which can teach us a lot about who we are and how we relate to others.

Having read nearly every profile that has ever been created on GoodTherapy.org; I have come to see the profile a bit like a personality test. With enough practice it becomes easy to read profiles and identify those members who will likely be successful in private practice and those who will likely struggle. I think that those therapists who are attracting people to their practice are doing a number of things fundamentally different from those who are not attracting clients. I hope you will use my recommendations and tips as an opportunity for self-reflection and for growth as an advertiser and as a therapist.

I have published these tips in the member’s area and encourage you to login and have a look:
http://www.goodtherapy.org/login.html

© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Fullerton Bureau - All Rights Reserved.