SF Bay Area Couples Counseling & Psychotherapy for Anxiety, Depression, Relationships & Sexual Problems

I’ve created a very brief survey to gain a better idea of the types of information that would be most useful to psychotherapy clients when looking at online reviews of mental health professionals.

This survey consists of three questions and can be easily answered in just a few minutes. I do not ask for any personal information about you.

Please help me by taking a couple of minutes to complete the survey and also sharing it with your friends.

The survey can be found here.

Thanks so much for your help.

The Bay Area organization, Gaylesta, (The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Psychotherapists Association of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area) is organizing a project called 50 Things You Need to Know About Working with LGBTQ Couples.

They are asking both psychotherapists and LGBTQ couples who have gone to therapy to submit brief information about that experience that would help other therapists. The goal of this project is to collect and share information will help other therapists to provide better care for LGBTQ clients.

Please note that the deadline to submit this information is February 1st. You can send your responses to: gro.atselyagnull@tcejorpselpuoc

You can find out more about the project here.

Some of the information Gaylesta would like to know from clients includes:

• How important is it that your therapist be willing to disclose their sexual identity?  Does it matter to you whether they identify as LGBTQ? Why or why not?
• How have differences related to class/race/ethnicity/religion/etc. impacted your relationship?
• What was particularly helpful or not helpful in the way your therapist supported exploration regarding sexual difficulties?
• How has your therapist been able to be supportive or not during the transitioning of one member of the couple?
• If applicable, what has helped you feel that your therapist has understood and supported your alternative relationship constellation (i.e. polyamorous or nonmonogamous)?
• What do you wish your therapist knew about your identity and/or life that would (have) help(ed) in the therapy?
• What technique or insight initiated by your therapist in relation to you being LGBTQ helped the therapy?

Please note that this is not research and it’s not anonymous. Gaylesta intends to compile the responses, however your name will be removed from them.

In 2009, I did a presentation at SXSW called Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks, even creating a corresponding wiki with resources. A month later, I spoke at the first Mental Health Camp for bloggers in Vancouver on the intersection of social media and mental health.

Looking back, it seems ironic that I haven’t written much since then about mental health or mental illness in tech culture especially when I consider that a large proportion of the people who seek my help have careers in tech. It’s as if I’ve forgotten that it’s worth mentioning.

And it’s really not.

Prodded by the recent suicide of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, one of the co-founders of Diaspora (a site, I had eagerly awaited due to multiple privacy failings on the part of Facebook), Violet Blue wrote a great post about called Tech’s Relationship With Depression, Suicide and Asperger’s. I share many of Violet’s concerns and she interviewed me for this article which includes a number of my comments.

Our friends and family in tech culture may suffer and struggle in ways that we may not see or just may not know how to identify. It’s hard to get someone the help they need when you don’t know they are suffering or if their coping or personality style involves masking their pain.

It’s not that people in tech are so special or different from anyone else, but working in the digital realm does involve the pressures of internet attention, visibility, or “celebrity,” which can sometimes be unexpected and overwhelming. Others may not realize that their normal ways of coping keep them isolated and deprived of support. I hope people will check out Violet Blue’s post which provides links to APA and NIMH’s resources for depression and suicide.

And if you or someone you know needs help, find a professional who you can talk to about your stress. There are low-fee options in every city. College counseling centers and counseling, psychology, or social work training sites may be good places to look for low-fee options. Larger sites such as APA’s Psychologist Locator and Psychology Today provide listings for private practice clinicians.

But whatever you do, talk to someone and let them know that you need some support. There is no need to suffer in silence. People are there to help you, and if you are thinking of taking your life, know that you will leave behind people who will miss you and who will wish they could have reached out to help.

In addition to seeing clients in my private practice, doing research, and teaching, I am also the Digital Director for APA Division 42, Psychologists in Independent Practice.

We’ve just completed a Youtube video on the benefits of talking to a psychologist, and I’m pleased to share it here. Please do pass it along if you think it may help someone.

Hello blogosphere! I have had a busy summer and am just about to head off for my late summer vacation.

Before doing so, I wanted to share some of the fun professional things I got to participate in recently.

Open Science – Friends of the Future

On Sunday, June 26th, I got to attend an invitation-only gathering of “interesting people with good ideas,” hosted by the Institute for the Future, a 43-year-old non-profit think-tank that helps companies, governments, and other organizations think about long-term future trends to make better decisions in the present. The focus of the day was to discuss and spark ideas around the bleeding edge futures of scientific exploration across multiple disciplines over the next decade. We were asked to think about what challenges, dreams, hopes, or solutions we need to address in the next ten years.

A week before the event, I started to get a touch of “imposter syndrome” when I realized I was the only psychologist in attendance with a group of anthropologists, neuroscientists, astrobiologists, astronomers, neurophysiologists…and, well, you get the picture. I began to worry that maybe I’m not so sciency, afterall!

But, the day was so rich with fascinating exchanges. I attended four sessions: Privacy, The Future of Attention, Social Media Culture….and Colonization in Space. At one point during the latter session, a couple of astronomers stopped their great conversation to look at me with genuine interest and say, “Hey, what do you, as a psychologist think about this? Do you have ideas we are missing?”

The whole experience reminded me once again about how important I feel it is for us to go to professional conferences that are multidisciplinary and not just go to events for psychologists. I got to learn so much, and they left me feeling that it was enriching for them to have me there.

If you want to get a taste of the event, you can see all of the compiled tweets.

2011 APA Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.

Last weekend, I was in D.C. for the 2011 APA Convention. I felt like I had to hit the ground running for this one, as it was my first time attending as Digital Director of APA Division 42.

I had a jam-packed two days in D.C. which included participating in Division 42′s Mentorshoppe lunch with some great students and Early Career professionals and some great experienced psychologists.

I also got to take part in some video interviews for APA Help Center to help answer questions that the general public may have about psychological care.

Then I was off to our Symposium on 21st Century Media: What Every Practicing Psychologist Needs to Know which also featured Angel Brownawell, APA Practice Directorate Integrated Media Manager on Branding Yourself as an Expert to the Media, Nancy Shute, NPR, reporter and blogger on Tips and strategies for working with the print and broadcast media, and Deb Kotz, Health reporter, blogger, Boston Globe on How to Use Your Blog to reach the Public and the Media. I spoke on Using Social Media to Brand Yourself as a Psychologist. I learned so much from my co-presenters. Thank you! Our Symposium was chaired by Nancy Molitor, Ph.D., President of APA Division 42.

The following day was spent in the Division 42 Board Meeting. Later that evening, I got to enjoy our Awards Ceremony and Social where I was honored to receive the “Best of the IP” Award** which is a yearly award that goes to the article voted best in Division 42′s Independent Practitioner Quarterly. It was extra-special to receive this award alongside such heroes of mine as Stephen Behnke, J.D., Ph.D. and Lillian Comas-Diaz, Ph.D. who both also received awards at the ceremony. My friend and colleague, Michael Schwartz, Psy.D. also received the Mentoring Award.

Later in the evening, I took videos of a handful of the Division 42 members in attendance which I’ve added to the Youtube channel of Division 42. It makes me happy to see these folks on video whom I mostly communicate with the rest of the year via email.

And with that, I’m off to unplug until September. Enjoy the rest of August, everyone!

**My article citation is:
Kolmes, K. (2010). Developing my private practice social media policy. Independent Practitioner, Summer 2010, 30 (3), pp. 140-143.