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What To Expect at Your Child's First Clinic Visit with a Psychologist or Counselor

 

  • What to Expect at a Clinic Visit

    The first visit is typically a visit where the psychologist is going to spend quite frankly a lot of time with the parents, getting some background and getting some history and understanding just what brought the parents to the clinic.  With younger children especially school aged children we'll sometimes leave children home that first visit just so we can get enough time with the parents. 

    And if parents feel like they need significant time with the psychologist on the first visit, we may just dedicate that time to them.

    For older children, we are going to spend some time with that child also understanding from their perspective what concerns they have and whether they share the same concerns that their parents have.

    How long will my child need your services?

    The average number of visits to our clinic, over all the families that we see is seven visits.  So our interventions are often fairly brief.  Now a lot of that depends on the age of the child and the nature of the problem.  So for some of our adolescents who are having maybe more significant issues the number of visits may be more significant than seven and often is.  Some children who are having fairly specific concerns, maybe its toileting difficulty, sleep difficulties, minor behavioral problems we might just see the family for one or two visits. ​

    Our goal is to provide the briefest most effective treatment to children of the families that we possibly can.​​

Behavioral Health