- 44 Main Street South, Brampton, ON L6W 2C4
- 905-463-2069
- info@eastwoodpsychologists.com
services
Psychotherapy
What is psychotherapy?
Why do people seek psychotherapy?
Is psychotherapy effective?
Hundreds of well-designed research studies have demonstrated that most people benefit from psychotherapy. Approximately 75% of those who participate in psychotherapy show improvement. Although response varies, many people can experience improvement quite quickly (10 to 20 sessions or less). Psychotherapy is effective for a wide range of problems such as anxiety, depression, relationship problems, lifestyle change and stress, among others. Research has shown that the improvements made in psychotherapy are generally long lasting.
At Eastwood Psychologists, it is important to us that you achieve the best outcomes possible. At our practice, psychological assessment and treatment is evidence-based, collaborative, and carefully monitored.
What is psychotherapy like?
Treatment length is personal and tailored to your needs. However, most commonly you will meet with your therapist for 50 minutes once per week. During this 50-minute session you and your therapist will draw on your knowledge, skills, and experiences that will help you work toward your goals, even if it has been difficult for you to access these resources on your own in the past. Psychotherapy should help you uncover the importance of your own choices and actions, particularly in those periods of your life when you may see only limited or distressing options.
To work towards your goals, your therapist may ask you to experiment with new or different ways of thinking, acting, or feeling. Your imagination, your honesty with yourself, and your commitment to your development will be important assets. Your therapist may also ask you to try some exercises between sessions, keep personal notes about some of your experiences, or complete forms about your experiences and progress. What you do during psychotherapy may also change over time depending on your needs, and the nature of your difficulties.
What does psychotherapy cost?
Psychological Assessment
What is a psychological assessment?
A psychological assessment provides an in depth understanding of a person’s cognitive, social, and/or emotional difficulties, and helps lay the groundwork for a plan to improve those difficulties. In some cases, an assessment will result in a diagnosis of a learning, attention, mental health or developmental disorder. At your request, the results of an assessment can be shared with a doctor, school or insurance company.
Psychological assessments can be conducted at any age, although the nature of the questions asked, and the answers obtained, depends on the client’s age and the nature of their difficulties.
What will a psychological assessment be like?
The referred client will attend 3-6 appointments; the number of appointments will vary depending on the client’s age and needs. Assessments of young children involve greater involvement from parents (e.g., interviews, completing questionnaires). In the case of child assessment, your psychologist will request to interview your child’s teacher, and may also need to observe your child in a natural setting (e.g., at school or daycare).
Following the formal assessment period (i.e., interviews, observations, questionnaires, & testing), your psychologist will study all the information, and will get a picture of the situation. This picture is called the clinical formulation, or the explanation of the client’s difficulties. Clinical formulations are based on psychological theory and research, they offer an opinion about the cause and nature of the difficulties and they lead to specific treatment recommendations. The psychologist will meet with you to go over the results and recommendations. You will also receive a written report summarizing all of the information.
What does psychological assessment cost?
Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)
Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is a type of therapy that is based on the science of behaviour change. ABA can be used to teach people important new skills, and it can also be used to reduce behaviours that are harmful or disruptive to a person’s life. Either way, the point of ABA is to make meaningful and lasting changes in a person’s life.
ABA can be used to help people of all ages with a variety of concerns. At Eastwood Psychologists, we primarily use ABA to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Intellectual Disability (ID) learn important skills.
- Language comprehension
- Functional communication
- Conversation skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Eye contact and gesture
- Social and interpersonal skills
- Academic skills
- Self-help skills
- Play skills
- Self-regulation skills
- Verbal Behaviour strategies
- Natural Environment Teaching (NET)
- Direct Instruction
ABA therapy is delivered at our clinic (located next door inside St. Paul’s United Church), in the community, or in your home, by a qualified ABAtherapist. Kirsty Hopley, BCaBA is the Senior Therapist (ST) who individualizes each learner’s program, updates programs as needed, and supervises the ABA therapists. Every learner’s program and treatment goals are individualized to meet his/her needs, based on our ongoing assessments and careful consultation with parents. Dr. Adrienne Eastwood, Psychologist and BCBA, is clinically responsible for the progress of each client. She reviews programs and progress regularly, and consults with parents as needed.
ABA myths:
- ABA is not about training a person to respond without thinking. Good quality ABA therapy helps the learner to think and understand and to apply what they have learned in new situations.
- ABA does not involve bribing children to do something that they do not want to do. Children typically enjoy ABA. Therapists build on a child’s natural motivations, and help to create new motivations by teaching children to enjoy new experiences.
- ABA is not robotic. Skilled therapists use a natural tone of voice and approach to communication.
- ABA is not just delivered at a table. ABA is also delivered during play-based interactions (particularly with young children), and in the community.
Fees:
Project ImPACT
Project ImPACT is a caregiver-mediated early years program for children with Autism. Project ImPACT will teach you how to help your child learn to communicate, play and interact.
We are excited to partner with the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS) to offer Project ImPACT through the Ontario Autism Program.
- Project ImPACT helps parents feel more confident, and helps children learn social-communication skills.
- Caregivers attend sessions with their children.
- Caregivers learn to use Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) during play and daily routines.
- 18 sessions of 1:1 coaching over 6 months.
- Service delivered in many languages, including English, French, Hindi, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Tagalog, and Urdu.
- Choice of sessions at our clinic, or virtual sessions from home.
- Flexible appointment times.
- Families from all cultures, religions, sexual orientations, and compositions are welcome.
- Funded for families with 12-48 monthold children who have received a letter from the Ontario Autism Program (OAP) inviting them to participate in a Caregiver-Mediated Early Years Program.
Please see our dedicated program website for more information www.projectimpactbrampton.ca
- Le projetImPACT aide les parents à se sentir plus confiants et aide les enfants à acquérir des compétencesen communication sociale.
- Les fournisseurs de soinsassistent aux séances avec leur enfant.
- Les fournisseurs de soinsapprennent à utiliserl’analyseappliquée du comportement (ABA) pendant le jeu et les routines quotidiennes.
- 18 séances de coaching 1:1 pendant 6 mois.
- Les services sontfournis dans de nombreuseslangues, dontl’anglais, le français, l’hindi, le polonais, le portugais, le pendjabi, le tagalog et l’ourdou.
- Choix de séances à notreclinique, ou séances virtuelles à domicile.
- Les heures de rendez-voussont flexibles.
- Les familles de toutes cultures, religions, orientations sexuelles et compositions sont les bienvenues.
- Financé pour les familles avec des enfants de 12 à 48 mois qui ontreçuunelettred’invitation du Programme ontarien des services en matière d’autisme (POSA).
Veuillez consulter notre site Web dédié au programme pour plus d’informations www.projectimpactbrampton.ca
Behaviour Skills Training
BST is an evidence-based approach to teaching new skills. BST can be used to teach a wide variety of skills including social skills, adaptive (self-help) skills, communication skills, play skills, assertiveness, and safety skills.
The process of BST involves 4 steps:
- Instruction: First, the therapist describes and explains the skill to be learned, including the importance of the skill.
- Modeling: After explaining the new skill, the therapist models/demonstrates the new skill.
- Practice: The individual is then given the opportunity to practice the skill (in front of the therapist).
- Feedback: The therapist provides supportive feedback about what the individual did correctly and how they can improve.
BST is often helpful to support children and adults with neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism – ASD, ADHD, and ODD. Therapists can use BST to teach individuals a variety of skills including social communication and self-help skills.
BST can also be used for parent training. Particularly when children are young, it is important for parents to learn how to teach important skills to their child to promote their development. A few examples of skills that can be taught to parents using BST include:
- How to prompt desired behaviours and reward their child using positive attention and praise when they demonstrate desired behaviours.
- How to teach their child to have their needs met using appropriate behaviour (asking nicely), instead of inappropriate behaviour (aggression).
- How to respond consistently to challenging behaviours.
- How to increase their child’s compliance during daily routines.
BST recognizes that parents are our partners in helping their children learn and grow. By giving parents the skills and tools that they need to promote their child’s development, we hope the child’s day-to-day routines become learning opportunities.
Fees:
Psychoeducational Coaching and Groups
*New* Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Adults with Executive Function Deficits.
Offered by Bernadette “Beejay” Street, M.Psy., Psychotherapist, the goal of this group is to help adults build essential executive function skills such as planning, organization, and time management skills. The group is based on evidence-based cognitive-behavioural therapy treatment models used by Dr. Mary V. Solanto (2008) and Drs. Russell Ramsay and Anthony L. Rostain (2007).
Why Group Therapy?
Group therapy helps build accountability and allows participants to learn from each other in a supportive, nonjudgmental environment. Our groups are small (maximum sixadults) to allow meaningful sharing among participants.
This group may be right for you if:
- You are an adult (18+) who is currently working or attending school,
- You have been diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts your executive function skills, such as ADHD, Learning Disorder, or Asperger’s Disorder,
- You want to work on improving your time management skills and work habits,
- You are prepared to commit and attend all 12 sessions,
- You want to contribute to a supportive group environment,
- You do not have another significant mental health disorder.
What are the details?
- When: Once a week for 12 weeks; Thursdays from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
- Where: Online, using a secure telehealth platform
- Cost: $100 per session.
Each session begins by reviewing the previous week’s take-home exercise, presenting and discussing new material, in-session exercise, and a discussion of the take-home exercise. Session topics are as follows:
Session 1: Orientation and Expectations
- Introduction to the goals and methods of the group
- Psychoeducation on executive dysfunction
- Identify personal goals, inner resources and strengths to draw upon to facilitate change
- Identify emotions that contribute to resistance to change
Sessions 2 – 6: Each session will address time and task management
- Time awareness/ time estimation
- Task initiation and completion by breaking down large/aversive tasks into manageable chunks
- Scheduling and prioritization
- Contingent self-reinforcement
- Visualize importance of activities using an “urgency grid”
- Neurobiology of executive function deficits and environmental interactions
- Identify negative automatic thoughts, emotional distractors, and oppositionality
- Self-activation with the use of adaptive compensatory strategies
- Visualization of rewards
Sessions 7 – 9: Implementation and maintenance of organizational systems
- Identify and follow through with the use of environmental accommodations (e.g., physical space for efficiency, how to reduce distractions)
- Application of self-management techniques
- Working through a plan
- Discuss rewards that help keep organizational systems going
Sessions 10 – 11: Project planning and implementation
- Use “starting with the end in mind” to further support planning for a project
- Breakdown of tasks into subtasks
- Establish check-in points for self-monitoring
- Enlisting others’ support
- Check-in on each other’s projects
- Use small reinforcements for accomplishing smaller tasks
Session 12: Looking into the future
- Self-evaluation
- Summarize and reinforce participants’ progress
- Highlight areas for continued practice/ improvement
- Formulate specific plans to meet future goals
Sounds perfect for me; how do I sign up?
Psychoeducational Coaching
What is psychoeducational coaching and who is it for?
Psychoeducational coaching involves direct teaching of skills needed for the educational context. This includes learning skills, work habits, academic skills, time-management and organization skills, and key social skills needed in the education context.
Psychoeducational coaching is often used to support individuals whose success at school and/or work has been impacted by neurodevelopmental disorders including: Learning Disability, ADHD, or Asperger’s Disorder.
How is the intervention plan developed?
Your coach will design an individualized intervention plan to address identified skill gaps. Each client’s strengths and needs are assessed using multiple sources of information, including:
- Psychological assessment reports (if available)
- School report cards (if applicable)
- Interviewing the client and/or their parents about current concerns, as well as the history of those concerns.
- Interviewing the client’s teacher (if applicable) over the phone
Using all the available information, specific goals are set. Once psycho-educational intervention is underway, the client’s progress is continually monitored, and goals can be revised as needed.
Our aim is to help our clients discover and learn about their strengths and challenges, work through their difficulties, and find resources and strategies that they can use to increase their success at school.
What are some examples of skills that are taught during psychoeducational coaching?
- Phonological awareness and phonics
- Reading fluency
- Reading comprehension
- Problem-solving strategies
- Mathematic fluency
- Written expression skills
- School-based social skills (e.g., raising one’s hand, waiting for your turn to speak or act, asking for help).
- Organization skills
- Time management
- Study habits
- Planning and completion of projects
- Compensatory strategies
- Assistive technology
- Tablet/iPad apps for learning and organization