GITRE Reflections

The past two years have been extremely challenging to us all. There seemed to be so much tension and conflict and division on many levels. Covid persists as an unpredictable and de-stabilizing reality. As more and more people stayed home to quarantine, single people felt isolated and anxious and sometimes lonely, and parents struggled to work and manage their children’s on-line schooling. Children have really wrestled with being on-line for school, not seeing friends, not spending time outside, and getting used to staying at home. Not everyone reacted the same: Some people began to like working from home and avoiding a commute, wearing comfortable clothing, making their own schedule. Others hated working alone, looking at a screen, not hanging out with friends at work.

The American Pediatric Society has pronounced that children are experiencing a mental health crisis, and urge adults to monitor their children’s depression and anxiety. We have been experiencing an unusually high number of requests which sometimes causes a delay in our current response time. Our clinicians strive to deliver the highest quality services and we thank you for your patience and trust in Gil Institute.

We are entering 2022 with some optimism that this disease might soon be contained. At the same time, we remain cautious and invested in everyone’s safety, so we continue to monitor the CDC guidelines, and sift through all the reliable medical information in order to make informed choices. Currently, most of our therapists are working remotely, while others have a small group of young children they see in the office, and others have designed a hybrid model with equal parts in-person and virtual meetings. We have discovered that parents like virtual sessions because they can avoid stressful commutes to therapy. The older children seem okay on-line, but others really hate it and want to come back to the office. It’s so true that no one model fits everyone, so people are finding the ways that work for them.

We have a great group of full- and part-time therapists who have many areas of expertise and talents. We meet regularly to enrich our clinical skills. Last year, 17 of us were quite blessed to take EMDR training with Sharon Rollins, Marshall Lyles, and Claudia Mustafa, trainers with Dr. Rick Levinson. In April, we will move into our consultation program after becoming fully trained in basic EMDR. We are excited to have so many clinicians trained in this valuable model which fits our clients very well.

Starbright Training continued to do virtual trainings all of 2021 and the 2022 program will be advertised shortly. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that most trainings can be done on-line, and we have developed expertise in engaging our participants with many expressive therapies.

We are proud to have a culturally-diverse staff, many of whom are bilingual. Our diversity and inclusion committee meets regularly to talk about building an anti-racist private practice.

In addition, we continued to learn new models of treatment so that our therapists can offer a variety of services. We consider ourselves an integrated, evidence- and practice-based private practice, and we are committed to maintaining a state-of-the-art approach given that treatment options are constantly developed, researched, and suggested.

We are grateful to our administrative and accounting staff (Silvia Escamilla and Ximena Smith) who continue to prioritize our general needs. We are also grateful to our Intake Coordinator, Malvolia Gregory, who responds to our callers as quickly as possible, listens well, and makes efforts to match the client and current concerns with our gifted clinicians. We have clinicians who specialize in adoption, attachment, grief and loss, eating disorders, foster care, sexual behavior problems, dissociative disorders, and general childhood trauma. Our therapists are trained to use Theraplay and the Marschak Interaction Method (MIM), Filial Therapy, Parent Coaching, Infant Mental Health, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Sensorimotor Integration, Child Centered Play Therapy, and Integrated Play Therapy. We provide individual, group, and family therapy to children, teens, and adults.

We welcome your questions and your feedback. We are committed to providing the very best services we can. Sincerely, Myriam Goldin and Eliana Gil