Services offered

About my professional Counseling & Psychotherapy activities and services

Overview

NOTE about the status of my practice: I have been on sabbatical for well over a year, while researching and designing a major public health intervention program focused on Posttraumatic Stress Disorders in non-military populations. As I am about concluded with this work, I hope to be resuming my professional practice in early 2013, at which time I expect to have transferred my professional license from Washington state to Utah. Until that time, I am not accepting psychotherapy clients, but am pleased to be engaged for Life Coaching, including such concerns as stress management, problem solving, and management of complex decisions. Feel free to contact me for further details.

What follows describes my services as they were at the time of the beginning of this sabbatical period.

I provide counseling and psychotherapy services to individuals and couples who want to improve their quality of life. The result of this work is usually significant and much-appreciated changes in thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Daily life becomes calmer and more comfortable, then more interesting and satisfying.

For many years, general psychotherapy and assessment have been my professional focus – and they still are. This encompasses anxiety disorders and depressive disorders, as well as a broad range of adjustment and adaptational challenges.

In addition, I have strong commitment to three specialties:

Psychological trauma disorders treatment

Assisting people to recover as fully as possible from emotionally overwhelming experiences has been a central focus of my work for a long time. This encompasses treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the full range of disorders typically associated with it – various anxiety manifestations and depression.

Dissociative disorders treatment

Increasingly seen by many in professional mental health as a special subset of the psychological trauma disorders, the dissociative disorders have traditionally been under-diagnosed in professional practice, and certainly under-treated. I have a special commitment to working on multiple fronts to correct this problem. My particular focus is on Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Relationship enhancement

Relationships are fundamental to human life and identity. Working with couples to achieve and maintain the level of intimacy they desire is an area of particular interest for me. Depending upon the needs and goals of the individuals involved, this may also involve periods of work with the individuals outside the context of their relationship.

Other pages in this section

• Scope of Services – About the range of services I offer.
• Education, Training, & Professional Activities – Summary of my professional training and experience.
• Payment – Policies and practices regarding payment for services.

About assessments

“Assessment” is a general term in psychology, encompassing a wide range of specific evaluations. I do two of the four most common types:

• I do mental health assessments, which identify the kinds of psychopathology an individual is experiencing, and their implications.
• I do psychological trauma assessments as well. They focus on an individual’s history of psychological trauma events, and the likely consequences of any persisting trauma an individual experiences.
• Psychological assessments focus primarily on cognitive characteristics, often with a particular focus on intelligence assessment. (I don’t do these.)
• Neuropsychological assessments focus on cognitive characteristics from the perspective of neurological function. (I don’t do these.)

Confidentiality

There is probably no other profession more dependent upon maintaining confidentiality of client information than is mental health. Confidentiality is a trust to be established and maintained at all times. Historically, and in practice, it has always been true that trust – the belief that you will be kept safe from injury – is the core belief which makes mental health services possible.

There are detailed Federal and State laws, as well as a variety of ethical recommendations and traditions, which cover confidentiality in my profession. You will be provided with summaries of the Federal and State laws prior to the beginning of services. Additional information on these topics is available in a number of locations on the Internet.

This may all be summarized by the following statement: What we do in Mental Health should be in the service of your needs and desires. The information you disclose about yourself, including even the fact of your having made contact with our office, is information that you control, with the only exceptions being those stipulated in the law – which are reasonable, if you read the law carefully.

Contacting me

If you have questions about anything you read at this website, or are wondering about the appropriateness of my services relative to any problems you may be experiencing, you are invited to contact me with your questions.

I interview everyone contacting me, prior to scheduling our first in-office meeting, to determine that I am indeed an appropriate provider of the services needed by the person or couple involved. When this is not the case, I will make a referral to another provider in the community.

There are two excellent ways to contact me:

• email: tc AT tomcloyd.com Copy this address to your email program, replacing “AT” with “@” before use, and removing the spaces on each side. I place “AT” where “@” belongs here as a spam-control measure – it makes the email address unrecognizable to robot programs which traverse the Internet stealing email addresses from websites.
• phone: (435) 272-3332 (USA) – This will reach my cell phone, which is almost always with me. You can call any time, as I turn off the ringer when I need not to be interrupted. Leave a message if I don’t answer, and I’ll return your call as quickly as I can.

If you need to mail something to me, please call (see phone number above) for my mailing address.