Therapy for Teens and Adolescents

One of the most difficult times in our lives is when we enter our teenage and adolescent years. We often see increased issues around social groups, peers, pressure from exams and even a bigger impact from the media on things like body image and self-expectations. In more rural areas like Cowra, Young or even Orange, teens also face increased risk due to the isolation and lack of resources these areas have to fall back on for support. This is also often a time when adolescents are finding out ‘their place in the world," as they develop a deeper sense of self-identity, as well as trying to work out who they are and where they fit in.

This also means they are at increased risk, as adolescents and teens can often struggle with thoughts of self-harm and suicide around these concerns. This risk is further increased if there is bullying or peer difficulties that might cause a sense of rejection from a group. Due to this, getting early and quick support is key to be able to ensure that risks do not go unaddressed nor continue to escalate. Riverina Counselling can even offer this ongoing therapy for teens and adolescents that are more regional and remote, often with less services to fall on.

We also aim to work with the parent briefly as a part of treatment. This isn’t so much your own therapy (though it may identify this as useful) but to also have a place to express concerns and develop ways and strategies to better connect and communicate with your child. This space also aims to let parents better develop their capacity to connect to their child and attempt to better understand what is going on inside, especially around emotions and emotional states.

Riverina Counselling believes that we need to engage the whole family to make change, though we acknowledge there may be other incidents such as sudden loss that may not need a parent to attend the reflective parenting component. We note that by attending, it tends to enhance treatment with your child, as this role modelling displays that it is healthy to have help seeking behaviours and to get support when things might become too difficult to manage.

From here, we aim to spend time developing a focus and how we got to the problem in the first place so we can develop a therapy to begin better understanding what causes us to get into trouble. This also helps develop increased self-awareness and early intervention skills should the issue arise again, as we can better see the early warning signs.

At times, we may even use our animals to support teens with more complex issues and trauma, as we also partner with Terapiya Cattery (www.therapycats.com.au) for animal supported therapies. We should note that some of these therapies may be long term with more complex cases and we recommend calling to discuss this prior to making a booking.

Welcome to our new site!

Recently, Riverina Counselling has begun to undergo some ongoing changes and restructure the way we work and do things. We are currently in the process of revamping the website to provide more information, as well as to be more user-friendly and appealing to visitors wishing to seek therapy services.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will continue to add, update and upgrade the site as we go, so do not be surprised if you notice any changes! Currently, we are predominately offering telehealth (video conferencing) or telephone therapy sessions due to the unique remote nature of where we are based, as well as that of regional Australia. We also continue to offer online Functional Capacity Assessments (FCA’s) to support NDIS applications and plan reviews, this can be within a reasonable distance face-to-face, as well as online via telehealth.

Over time, our aim is to expand our telehealth therapy services as well as increase our support in doing FCA’s as assessment to support the diagnosis of autism. These sessions do have a face-to-face component and are being done on a needs assessment basis, pending how far away someone is and how many people may need assessing. Over time we will aim to also expand our services to include Medicare, as currently we provide private therapy, NDIS funded support in self and plan managed participants, the NSW Victim Services Scheme, as well as certain private health providers that offer a rebate (please check this on an individual basis).

We will still continue to focus supporting those with trauma, psychosocial disability (especially areas such as schizophrenia and personality issues related to trauma) as well as autism and intellectual disability to name a few. We still recommend reaching out if there are further questions around this, especially as we are seeing major shifts in things such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). This is why we recommend making contact prior to commencing with any to ensure that we are able to rpovide support and there are no issues to engagement. An example being the recent shifts with NDIS ‘stated supports’. This means that if a plan does not have the correct catogory stated, we are umlikely to be able to support someone until this includes the needed services, such as social work.

As Riverina Counselling continues to grow, we will also aim to provide more comprehensive support and increased services across the region, though we are some way off achieving this so far, but stay tuned!