Anxiety is the body’s response to a real or imagined threat. It can be experienced as worry, tension, fear, or panic. Ideally, anxiety leads to effective action.

Anxiety becomes a problem when it leads to excessive, persistent, or irrational fears that interfere with daily living. A combination of psychotherapy and medication is often an effective treatment.

Andrew Solomon writes: “grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”

Symptoms of depression may include significant changes in a person’s appetite, sleep, energy, concentration or mood. Changes in mood may include feeling sad, less interested in life, hopeless, worthless or even suicidal.

The good news is depression is highly responsive to treatment, especially treatment that includes medication and psychotherapy.

According to the American Institute of Stress, 43 percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects due to stress and it is estimated that a significant percentage of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related complaints or disorders.

While stress is a natural result of both positive and negative life changes, it can become a problem. Worry, anxiety, and feeling overwhelmed are common signs of stress.

Psychotherapy can be useful in reducing the most severe symptoms of stress and managing the normal stresses of life.

Trauma can result from a sudden and dramatic event involving actual/threatened death or injury to self or others.

Long-term exposure to physically or emotionally threatening situations can also result in trauma.

As a result of traumatic experience a person may have feelings of anxiety, depression, self-blame, intrusive thoughts (like nightmares or flashbacks), and fear or avoidance of situations that might bring on symptoms.

Intimate relationships - marriage, partnerships and parent/child - can bring us both joy and stress.

Stresses in a relationship can become overwhelming. When this happens, learning communication skills, developing common goals, and understanding each other’s needs can help get a relationship back on track.

Counseling can provide structure, information, and support to all family members or couples, whether the goal is to improve a marriage or other relationship, or to more gently dissolve a relationship when that is the choice.

Children and adolescents can experience stress in any aspect of life, within the family, at school, or in the community. Many events in a family's life, such as marriage, divorce, marital conflict, illness, death, substance abuse, or domestic violence can profoundly affect children.

Children and teens may express their stress through behaviors such as poor grades, misbehavior, withdrawal, angry outbursts, or suicide attempts. Sometimes children and teens benefit from extra help in mastering individual challenges, such as depression, anxiety, or an attention disorder.

In therapy, children, teens, and families can learn to recognize and use strengths and learn new skills for communicating or coping with feelings.