Academic Difficulties

No matter where you are on your academic journey, 

Psychotherapy can address those underlying issues and help treat them. An adolescent who experiences difficulty in school after a traumatic incident, for example, may find his or her performance in the classroom improving once he or she is able to discuss the trauma in therapy. 

Often mental health problems manifest as academic difficulties.  There are many reasons for this—all different.  Depression, for instance, tends to cause concentration problems.  Anxiety can cause preoccupation with personal emotional comfort that dominates one’s attention during classroom and study time.  Learning disabilities and attention deficits affect academic performance.  Less likely, there are issues of immaturity and failure to develop strong habits that plague students transitioning to college.  What is rarely the case is a deficit of ability and potential.  Psychotherapy, and particularly the technological adjuncts that we now combine with therapy can be enormously helpful in shepherding students through these difficulties and building their confidence.  Occasionally the problem is biological, and there are nutritional and biomedical interventions that can make all the difference when this is the case.

 In my practice, I work with many secondary and college students who are struggling academically with gratifying success.  With adult learners, students find therapy invaluable. It can help one learn to focus and can calm anxiety appreciably.  With younger children, we often introduce creative arts and play therapy.  This is a biomedicallprogram to reduce anxiety and increase resilience.  It is administered through an electronic “game” played on the smartphone or other electronic device and is therefore a pleasant experience for the student and compliance seems not to be a problem.  N