Sam (she/hers) works primarily with children, adolescents, families, and young adults. She believes that creating a safe, non-judgemental therapeutic relationship is one of the most important aspects of therapy and can aid in understanding and transforming relationships in other areas of life. Sam enjoys utilizing play-based therapies when possible, as well as drawing and artwork. She utilizes various therapeutic modalities, including DBT, CBT, Trauma-Focused CBT, motivational interviewing, psychodynamic work, and is a trauma-informed provider. Sam particularly works with issues related to anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and familial conflict, suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-injury, and eating disorders. She hopes to be able to offer assessments in order to write letters in support of people seeking gender-affirming care in the near future. She also plans to receive additional training in working with people who have experienced trauma, particularly chronic and complex developmental trauma.

 

Sam understands that therapy is inherently political, and acknowledges her own privileges. She values the lived experience of her clients, and recognizes the role that cultural and systemic oppression play in the lives of many, and works to understand how that impacts mental health. Sam practices from an anti-racist framework, and her practice is further informed by disability justice, intersectional feminism, and Health at Every Size. She is eager to learn about ways to best support clients from various communities and is open to having difficult conversations about how to do so.

 

Sam is additionally passionate about anti-carceral care, and in building better models of care for people experiencing psychiatric crises, including peer support programs. She is involved in advocacy working to create peer-respite centers in the state of Michigan as an alternative to psychiatric hospitalizations. She is also passionate about reproductive rights, dismantling weight bias/fatphobia in healthcare, and in improving access to affordable mental healthcare.

 

Sam received her Masters of Social Work from the University of Michigan in 2021, and completed her internship with Michigan Medicine's Child/Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry Department. Sam had the opportunity to work with the Crisis Support Clinic, which provides short-term care to bridge the gap between a crisis resulting in a psychiatric inpatient admission or emergency room visit and finding a long term provider. She also worked with the Treatment Resistant Disorders clinic, which oversaw the outpatient Electroconvulsive Therapy treatments for children/adolescents. Additionally, Sam did a 6-month rotation with the Trauma and Grief clinic, providing psychotherapy for children who had experienced trauma and/or significant losses. She has also been a volunteer peer-support group facilitator at Ele’s Place Ann Arbor since fall 2019, working with children of a wide variety of ages who have experienced a death in their family.