Dr. Zaleski Introduces The OCD Clinic at The Mental Health Collective

AN INTERVIEW WITH: DR. KRISTEN ZALESKI, PHD, LCSW | CHIEF CLINICAL OFFICER

Interview

DR. ZALESKI, WHAT IS THE FOCUS OF THE OCD CLINIC?

So, as is typical for The Mental Health Collective, we look at any mental illness through our brain, but our body, the top and the bottom, going down and up. So with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, we have taken the same approach. Not everyone is a one-size-fits-all model. Mental Health Collective is really skilled at evidence-based treatment in the realm of OCD, those would be therapies like Exposure and Response Prevention and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. But we also really pride ourselves in the practice-based medicine that we see emerging from communities that haven’t quite made it to those academic institutions with 20 years of evidence. And so in our case, we are heavily leaning on Inferential-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, ICBT. We are training our EMDR clinicians in OCD treatment for EMDR. OCD treatment for phobias. We have clinicians specialized in DBT and Habit Reversal Training for Trichotillomania and body dysmorphic disorder. We have hypnotherapy here, which has shown some promise around some of these modalities. In addition to that, some really robust family work with how families accommodate OCD and how they can help clients when they return home. At The Mental Health Collective, we are doing everything we normally do that we’re known to do with trauma disorders and other mood disorders, and we’re now harnessing all of our expertise around the treatment of OCD.