Mental Health Counseling

At the Stram Center, we recognize that mental health is often the basis of your potential to navigate life’s challenges as well as to heal from physical illness. Understanding your full self, including traumas and difficulties you may have experienced, is often the first step to learn what your unique strategies are in the face of life’s difficulties. Quality healthcare should include support from professionals who understand how to fully listen to you and your needs. For Lyme and chronic illness patients specifically, we so often hear that their prior experiences in mainstream medicine included medical gaslighting; this can have long-lasting physical, psychological, and emotional affects that can influence a person’s ability to restore health. Through our collaborative model of care, our Licensed Mental Health Counselor and the practitioners at the Stram Center can help you develop the physical and socioemotional tools to achieve an optimal outcome in your overall wellness and improve your quality of life. We believe that mental health is integral to your physical health—we are here to help you embark on your mind, body, and spiritual healing journey.

What Does a Licensed Mental Health Counselor do?

A Licensed Mental Health Counselor (L.M.H.C.) supports you in your personal life by providing you the tools to address your struggles and triumphs in a positive, clarifying way. To become licensed to practice in their state, mental health counselors must complete a master’s program in counseling, which typically takes two years. As part of this program, students take part in supervised fieldwork. Our L.M.H.C will provide support and guidance that can help you identify triggers and cope with negative emotions. She will work with you to develop strategies that allow you to gain insight and self-awareness, in order to make meaningful behavioral changes that you can apply to help you take charge of your life.

Who is our LMHC? Read more about Danielle Stram.

Our LMHC, offers counseling in the following areas:

Individual psychotherapy, adult and adolescents
Group Therapy
Trauma/PTSD
Anxiety
Depression
Suicidal ideation and self-harm
Grief and loss
Self-esteem issues
Relationship issues
Mood and personality disorders
Sexual/physical/emotional trauma
Substance use
Life transitions

Mental Health Counseling Modalities

At the Stram Center, our L.M.H.C will assess and treat your mental and emotional health disorders, relationships issues, and life transitions and challenges through various methods of psychotherapy. The modality our L.M.H.C is individualized, some of these methods include but are not limited to the following:

- Person Centered: The goals of this approach include tends to increase the client's self-esteem, learning abilities from making mistakes, trust in themselves, positive relationships, and idea of who they are. Clients should be able to express and experience their emotions better in real time as well.

- Feminist: The goal of this modality is to address the concerns of women, people of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-gender conforming individuals; people with special needs; immigrants; refugees; and more. Those who have experienced oppression may be able to find a treatment that can inspire social transformation in addition to addressing mental health concerns.

- Mindfulness-based (MBCT): This method is a type of psychotherapy that involves the combination of cognitive therapy, meditation, and the present-oriented, non-judgmental attitude called mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation teaches people to consciously pay attention to their thoughts and feelings through techniques and exercises.

- Psychodynamic: This therapy focuses on the psychological roots of emotional suffering. Its hallmarks are self-reflection and self-examination, and the use of the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient's life.

- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): This method is a form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness. In many studies, CBT has been demonstrated to be as effective as, or more effective than, other forms of psychological therapy or psychiatric medications.

- Strength Based Therapy: This modality is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses more on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, and less on weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings. This focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on you best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience and change worldview to one that is more positive

- Multicultural: This therapy addresses the concerns of those whose race, ethnicity, disability, or other social factor falls outside of the majority, and issues that arise such as oppression, racism, and marginalization.

- Group therapy: We offer group therapy, which is the involvement of multiple people in one session. This type of therapy is designed to target a specific problem, such as depression, eating disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety, chronic pain or substance use.

- Trauma/PTSD Focused: Trauma-Focused Therapy is a specific approach to therapy that recognizes and emphasizes understanding how the traumatic experience impacts a child's mental, behavioral, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

- Relational: This approach can help individuals recognize the role relationships play in the shaping of daily experiences. This model may be beneficial to people seeking therapy for any number of reasons, but in particular to address long-term emotional distress, especially when distress occurs as a result of relational concerns.

Integrative Treatment Options

Integrative Medicine

Integrative medicine is the blending of conventional medicine with holistic, complementary, and alternative medicine. Integrative Medicine is defined as healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person (body, mind, heart and spirit), including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship and makes use of all appropriate therapies, both conventional and…
Integrative Medicine

Nutritional Counseling

The practitioners at the Center recognize that diet is often the basis for your heath and your potential to heal. Adopting a healthy diet is often the first step towards correcting health problems. Many medical conditions can be treated more effectively when the patient implements specific diets and uses nutritional supplements. These interventions afford fewer complications and side effects than…
Nutritional Counseling

Chronic Illness

Nowhere is the need for an integrative approach more apparent than in the management of chronic illness. We are a synthesis of many systems all working together, and when one or more systems become diseased, all of the others will be stressed as well. From physical challenges, to the challenges of everyday living, to a satisfying quality of life, we have to go past seeing that illness in…
Chronic Illness

Acupuncture

Did you know that acupuncture has been shown to be more effective than conventional treatment for migraines, back and knee pain? Acupuncture is also the complementary therapy most recommended by medical doctors (M.D.'s), and is covered under more insurance plans than ever before. No other traditional healing method has ever earned as much world-wide success, recognition and support! Acupuncture…
Acupuncture

Cancer Care

Integrative Oncology at the Stram Center The Center offers a wide variety of cancer care treatments — including IV therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, acupuncture, medical massage and clinical nutrition — to combat cancer cells, help boost your immune system, reduce the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, increase your energy, reduce anxiety and…
Cancer Care

Lifestyle and Prevention

Nutrition is an essential component to preventative health, and is one of the most modifiable factors in our lives. Embracing a proper diet for your body has the power to positively impact your health on all levels, helping you reach your own distinctive state of wellness.
Lifestyle and Prevention

Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease Diagnosis and Treatment in Delmar NY and Burlington VT offices At the Stram Center we vow to continue our education on Lyme Disease research, stay up to date on the most effective testing and all the safe available therapies. Moreover, our years of experience in treating patients according to the whole person-integrative medicine approach allows us the most effective way to care…
Lyme Disease

Naturopathic Medicine

Much like a general practitioner, a naturopathic doctor manages a broad range of health conditions affecting all people of all ages. However, naturopathic medicine is a distinct system of primary health care, distinguished by the healing principles upon which its practice is based.
Naturopathic Medicine

Pain Management

Restorative Pain Solutions Pain can affect every part of our lives. Pain can lead to fatigue, emotional distress and many other challenges in addition to the physical discomfort. The causes of pain can vary widely, and although most people with chronic pain share much in common, every person living with pain has their own story. At the Center, our emphasis is on resolving the source of the pain,…
Pain Management

Stress Reduction

Many of the therapies offered at the Center, from Integrative Medicine, to Massage Therapy, to Healing Touch, Acupuncture, and other forms of traditional Chinese medicine, are extremely effective in helping people reduce stress.
Stress Reduction