MENDING HEARTS COUNSELING
Marriage Counseling: To provide marriage counseling to couples.
Marriage counseling may also be called couples therapy. Marriage counseling is based on research that shows that individuals and their problems are best handled within the context of their relationships. The marriage counselor works to help the couple understand how that, in most cases, both partners are contributing to the issues in the relationship. Then from a Biblical perspective and a Christian worldview, the two can learn how to change the way they interact with each other to truly resolve their problems.
Mending Hearts Family Services also offers treatment for couples before they get married to help them understand potential problem areas. Typically counseling sessions include both partners, but sometimes one partner chooses to work with a therapist alone. The specific treatment plan depends on each individual situation.
Spiritual Integrative Psychotherapy
Spiritual Integrative Psychotherapy recognizes the spiritual dimension of each individual as an important part of the therapeutic process. The focus is to facilitate wholeness by attuning the values of traditional psychological theories with the reality of the human spirit and God's Holy Word, the Bible. Cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of functioning are brought together on a foundation of Christian principles with spiritual tools to support the individual's journey.
Parent/Child Relationships: To provide help for famililes having difficulty parenting their children or teens.
This service may involve conjoint family counseling or individual counseling. Mending Hearts Family Services provides counseling services as needed. The agency offers parenting classes on an ongoing basis. Additionally, Mending Hearts Family Services offers a parenting class for parents who have emotionally disturbed children on an as needed basis.
Children's counseling: To provide therapy to children suffering from the various stresses within their culture.
Mending Hearts Family Services works with individual children suffering from ADHD, attachment issues, trauma, grief/loss, anger, identity issues, neglect, sexual and physical abuse, etc. In addition, Mending Hearts Family Services provides counseling to children affected by single parenting, adoption, foster care, or divorce. Mending Hearts Family Services does not provide child custody evaluations for divorcing parents or parents who are disputing custody of their minor children. Mending Hearts Family Services is working to develop more expertise in working with children who are from birth to age five.
Bonding/Attachment Therapy: To assist parents and children who are affected by bonding/attachment disorders through assessment and therapy.
Mending Hearts Family Services’ therapists utilize Directive Family Attachment Play Therapy to work with children who are attachment disordered and their families. The treatment protocol is non-intrusive and adheres to the “Technical Assistance Document 2, Disorders of Attachment” document developed by ADHS. Mending Hearts Family Services has two therapists who are trained to provide a full continuum of treatment in this highly specialized area.
Bonding/attachment therapists are utilized with children who have experienced multiple moves or inadequate nurturing during the first years of life. These children exhibit the following symptoms: crazy lying, stealing, superficial charm, lack of remorse, affection that is given only on the child's terms and repressed rage. Children who have been abused, neglected, hospitalized, experienced chronic undetected pain, experienced multiple moves and/or caregivers, or were drug-exposed often show these symptoms. Children who have been under a stress, who have led transient lives, and who have not had their physical and emotional needs met may also experience these symptoms. Children who have been in voluntary or involuntary foster care and are moving towards adoptive placement also need this specialized therapy. Adoption subsidy will not pay for these services until the child is in an adoptive home and a petition to adopt has been filed and after they have been denied service by the public behavioral health system. Children with bonding/attachment problems need special help in learning to reduce their anger, to build trust and to be able to bond and attach to their parents in healthy ways.
Adoptive/Blended Families: To provide post-adoption services that includes counseling and seminars for adoptive parents with children and teenagers.
Mending Hearts Family Services’ work with adoptive families has brought better first hand knowledge of the issues involved in blended families: role definition, entitlement, claiming, attachment, separation and loss, as well as sorting out loyalties, identity issues and family of origin issues.
Individual Counseling: To provide individual counseling to adults.
Mending Hearts Family Services additionally provides general counseling to adults. These adults may be in crisis or depressed due to a specific situation or circumstance. When a crisis presents itself to a family, or to any individual in a family, the whole system is affected. The danger is recognized by all, along with its potential to damage or destroy lives. However, the opportunities presented by the crisis may be more challenging to uncover. Crisis often brings pain, pain that can produce growth. Turning a crisis into an opportunity often requires professional help. It is Mending Hearts Family Services’ objective to provide this kind of help.
Grief Counseling: To provide counseling to children or adults who are facing loss.
Children in voluntary and involuntary foster care placements also face tremendous separation and loss issues. Mending Hearts Family Services therapists have the expertise to work with these grief issues, as well as to generalize that expertise to separation and loss issues, which plague families, individual adults and children that have experienced divorce, multiple moves, and death.
Sexual Abuse: To provide therapy for children and adults who have experienced sexual abuse.
These are the primary goals of Mending Hearts Family Services' outpatient counseling program. Mending Hearts Family Services provides services in other areas of need based upon available space and expertise. Mending Hearts Family Services provides pre-marital and marital therapy. Mending Hearts Family Services has found that this is not an under-served population in the Christian community. Mending Hearts Family Services typically refers individuals suffering from psychotic episodes and deep seeded psychological problems to appropriate outside agencies. The agency does not feel that it has the expertise, time or space to handle these issues.
