Mental Health Counselor Interview Paper

I was afforded the opportunity to interview an alumni Stephanie Tolli, who currently works as a mental health counselor at the Puerto Rican Family Institute (PRFI) located in Brooklyn, NY. The area the clinic is based in, is home to low-income families that come from a Hispanic/Latino background. The institute was founded in 1960 in Puerto Rico as a non-profit organization. Its primary mission is to prevent family disintegration and enhance the self-sufficiency of the Latino community. The PRFI provides mental health treatment, crisis intervention, child placement prevention, adults residential care facilities, head start programs and educational programs. Due to the fact that their cliental are majority low-income families, the institute …show more content…
As a result, the office of mental health (OMH) visits yearly for audits to make enforce that the employees are hitting their quotas for seeing patients and providing accurate and effective treatment plans. In addition, although the clinic does not see clients who have been diagnosed with developmental disabilities, they see clients who have been diagnosed with adjustment disorders that need short-term therapy as well as people diagnosed with chronic disorders: schizophrenia, bipolar and personality disorder.
I wanted to know as much as possible about the field I was getting myself into, so I asked Stephanie what a typical month looked like for her and what her responsibilities were. She told me that she usually sees about 140 patients whom many are seen biweekly and sessions usually run for about 30-45 minutes. In addition, she completes treatment plans every 3 months and completes case …show more content…
She brought up the fact that the job was very rewarding in the aspect that she could see a client, develop a treatment plan and see it follow through. She also added that the staff gives her a lot of support and welcomed her with arms especially after seeing that she was a Latina. “I am not sure what it is but it was like when they found out I was Spanish, they were very excited and made me feel like family right away” she said. I wanted to know if she had any strategies to maintain a well balanced sense of mindfulness, she responded, “I go to the gym next door during my lunch breaks to get away from the job for a bit”. She went on to add that working out during that hour gives her time to regroup and relax. “I hear so many stories and my hardest thing is not wanting to use countertransference…I feel burned out but in the end I love what I do” she said. I appreciated her honesty and I was so glad that I could interview someone that actually had already gone through our