Family therapy
Our experts provide family therapy services to support families in addressing a variety of challenges, fostering healthier relationships, and navigating complex dynamics with care and…
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Co-Parenting Counseling
Our experts provide Co-Parenting Counseling to help parents navigate challenges, improve collaboration, and foster a supportive environment for their children with care and expertise. Co-Parenting…
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Reunification Counseling
Our experts provide Reunification Counseling to help families rebuild trust, improve communication, and create a supportive environment for healthy relationships with care and expertise. Reunification…
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Our skilled therapists offer Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help individuals overcome mental health challenges, develop healthier thought patterns, and build lasting emotional…
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Eye Movement Desensitization And Reprocessing Therapy
Our skilled therapists offer Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy to help individuals overcome trauma, process challenging emotions, and build healthier coping…
Find out MoreCognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) represents a structured psychotherapeutic intervention with demonstrated clinical efficacy across diverse mental health presentations including depressive disorders, anxiety-spectrum conditions, substance use disorders involving alcohol and drugs, relationship conflicts, disordered eating patterns, and serious psychiatric illnesses requiring comprehensive treatment approaches.
Which Of The Five, And How To Tell
Two of the five are usually court-ordered, and they work differently from the three that aren’t.
Court-ordered work carries reporting duties, a defined end condition, and confidentiality rules that don’t match what people expect from therapy. Our family therapy page for Miami-Dade covers the orders, the statutes and the Miami-Dade court process in full. This page won’t repeat it.
| Service | Who it’s for | Usually court-ordered |
|---|---|---|
| Cognitive behavioral therapy | Anxiety, depression, panic, obsessive-compulsive presentations | No |
| EMDR | PTSD and trauma-related presentations | No |
| Family therapy | Household conflict, adolescent behavior, blended-family adjustment | Sometimes |
| Co-parenting counseling | Two separated parents who have to make decisions together | Often |
| Reunification counseling | A child resisting or refusing contact with a parent | Almost always |
If the last two describe you, read the Miami-Dade family therapy page first. It explains what your order actually obligates the clinician to do, which changes who you should hire.
What The Guidelines Actually Recommend, And Where They Stop
Three bodies publish PTSD treatment guidance. They agree less than a modality page would suggest.
The VA and Department of Defense, Version 4.0, June 2023. Recommendation 8, verbatim: “We recommend the individual, manualized trauma-focused psychotherapies for the treatment of PTSD: Cognitive Processing Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or Prolonged Exposure.” Strength: strong. Recommendation 9 puts Ehlers’ Cognitive Therapy, Present-Centered Therapy and Written Exposure Therapy one tier below at “we suggest.” Recommendation 10 lists twenty-one further approaches, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Narrative Exposure Therapy, as having insufficient evidence to recommend for or against.
Read that list before you shop. Several therapies marketed hard in South Florida sit in Recommendation 10.
NICE, guideline NG116. Recommendation 1.6.16 offers trauma-focused CBT to adults presenting more than one month after any traumatic event. Recommendation 1.6.19 offers EMDR to adults presenting more than three months after a non-combat-related trauma. Between one and three months, 1.6.19’s sibling recommendation makes EMDR a “consider” that turns on patient preference.
So under the UK guideline, a combat veteran and a car-crash survivor do not get the same EMDR recommendation. Nobody says that on an EMDR page. Ask about it if it applies to you.
The World Health Organization, mhGAP guideline third edition, November 2023. WHO gives a conditional recommendation covering individual trauma-focused CBT, group trauma-focused CBT, digital or remote trauma-focused CBT, EMDR and stress management, without ranking them against each other.
The gap between “recommended” and “will work for me”
About half of people meet response criteria after CBT for an anxiety disorder.
Loerinc and colleagues, in Clinical Psychology Review in 2015, reviewed 87 studies published between 2000 and 2014 that reported response rates for a CBT condition. Their finding: “overall treatment response rates across anxiety disorders averaged 49.5% at post-treatment and 53.6% at follow-up.”
That’s a real number and it isn’t a discouraging one. It’s the base rate against which your own progress should be read, and it’s why the next section exists. A clinician who implies everyone responds is either not reading the literature or not telling you about it.
For generalized anxiety disorder specifically, the Cochrane review of psychological therapies (CD001848) concluded that “Psychological therapy based on CBT principles is effective in reducing anxiety symptoms for short-term treatment of GAD,” with a risk ratio of 0.64 for clinical response against treatment as usual or waiting list across 13 contributing studies. The review dates from 2007, which is worth knowing when anyone quotes it at you, including us.
Why the wait is long in Miami-Dade
Florida meets 22.60% of its mental-health need. That’s the official number, and it’s why every practice in this county has a waitlist.
HRSA’s designated shortage-area summary, data as of 1 July 2026, records 254 Mental Health Health Professional Shortage Area designations in Florida covering 13,764,968 people, with 22.60% of need met and 775 additional practitioners required. The national figure is 26.53%. Miami-Dade sits inside a designated low-income population-group shortage area, plus more than nineteen separate facility designations.
Mental Health America’s 2025 State of Mental Health in America, published 1 October 2025, ranks Florida 44th of 51 on Access to Care.
The county-level detail is sharper. Miami-Dade’s own press release of 16 June 2026, announcing that the Board of County Commissioners approved operating agreements for the new Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery, states that the facility’s first phase addresses “the loss of 259 crisis beds in our community since 2018.” The Center opens with 10 crisis stabilization beds, 20 short-term residential treatment beds and 45 residential treatment program beds. That’s 75, against a 208-bed design. As of this writing it has not opened; reporting in July 2026 put the opening in 2027.
Two consequences worth planning around:
Intake wait is a supply problem, not a service level. Every practice in this county is drawing from the same short pool. Ask for a real date rather than “soon,” and ask what happens if you deteriorate while you wait.
Crisis capacity is thinner than the treatment capacity. If your situation could escalate, that belongs in the first conversation, not the fourth session.
Who Does The Therapy, And Who Doesn't
Therapy here is delivered by clinicians who are not the forensic evaluator on your case. That is deliberate and it occasionally costs us the work.
APA’s Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology, Guideline 4.02.01, puts it this way: “Providing forensic and therapeutic psychological services to the same individual or closely related individuals involves multiple relationships that may impair objectivity and/or cause exploitation or other harm.” The guidance is aspirational rather than binding, and plenty of practices treat it that way. We separate the roles.
| Clinician | Credential | Role here |
|---|---|---|
| Stephanie Newberg, M.Ed, MSW, LCSW | Licensed Clinical Social Worker | Therapy. Over 25 years with individuals, families and couples |
| Dr. Elizabeth Woodruff, LCSW | Therapist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker | Therapy. B.S. Psychology, Palm Beach Atlantic University |
| Dr. Cathy Colet, Psy.D. | Licensed Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, Florida license PY9058 | Forensic and clinical evaluation. Practice is approximately 75% forensic |
| Dr. Lauren Miller | Clinical and Forensic Neuropsychologist | Neuropsychological evaluation. Nearly 20 years |
| Dr. Matthew J. Jalazo | Forensic Psychologist | Forensic evaluation. Fifteen years full-time forensic practice |
| Dr. Christopher J. Beltran | Forensic Psychologist | Forensic evaluation. Over twenty-five years, criminal and family law |
The practical rule: if one of the psychologists in the lower half of that table has evaluated you or a family member in a legal matter, they will not be your therapist, and we will tell you that on the first call rather than after you’ve booked.
Verify any Florida license yourself at the Department of Health’s license verification portal, including ours. There is no separate “trauma therapist” or “EMDR therapist” license in Florida. Everyone doing this work holds a standard license under chapter 490 or chapter 491, so a modality named on a website is a training claim, not a credential. Ask where they trained in it and when.
What Happens After You Call
Four stages. No surprises in the middle.
Intake call, 20 minutes, no charge. You describe what’s happening. We tell you which of the five services fits, whether it’s something we should do or someone else should, and what the current wait is. If your matter is court-ordered, we tell you what your order changes about the work before you commit to it.
First session and baseline. History, presenting problem, risk screen, and a scored measure appropriate to the presentation. The score is the baseline the eight-session review is measured against.
Treatment. Weekly is the default. EMDR under the NICE description runs 8 to 12 sessions for a single-incident presentation and longer where there are multiple traumas. CBT length depends on the presentation and gets estimated at the first session rather than left open.
Session eight, then every eight after. Re-score, disclose the number, decide together whether to continue, change or refer.