Lois Bernard, LCSW is a clinical social worker licensed in North Carolina since 1992 and New York State since 2005. Ms. Bernard is in private practice working with children, adults and couples. Although she has specialized in the area of trauma treatment, she will work with individuals and families who seek to enhance the quality of their life separately or together. She also contracts with Child Abuse Prevention Services, Inc., A United Way Agency which provides counseling to abuse survivors and their parents at no cost to the clients. Ms. Bernard provides an 8 session individualized psycho-educational curriculum for non-offending caregivers of abused children and if needed, continuing counseling with grant funding or sliding scale. Ms. Bernard accepts Medicaid, Medicare, and is a provider for the Blue Cross/Blue Shield network and Tricare, the insurance used by the Military. She will also accept self-pay on a sliding scale.
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Some of the most troublesome problems experienced by individuals and families involve emotional trauma. There are many people whose relationship problems, seemingly unrelated to family history, can have roots in the past. Some people who have experienced trauma develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, an anxiety disorder whose symptoms can include nightmares, flashbacks, a foreshortened sense of the future, insomnia, irritability and even physical symptoms. They may also experience emotional numbing, feel detached from others and may experience the present as less real than the past. In recent years, functional neuroimaging technologies have enabled scientists to monitor changes in the brain following exposure to trauma and even prior to and after some psychotherapeutic interventions. The effects of trauma are beginning to be understood as exacerbating addictive processes and intimacy difficulties. In children, the effects of trauma may appear as attentional difficulties, irritability and aggression or may coexist with disorders such as ADHD. Sorting out the effects of trauma on current behavior is crucial to an accurate diagnosis and hence, appropriate treatment.
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In the News:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html?_r=1&hp click to access full article:
Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics
Published: December 11, 2009
New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.
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Clinical vs. Forensic Social Work?
What you need to know about the differing roles
(please download and read article on the right side
of page):
| Irreconciliable Conflict PDF |
FAQ's re: Mental Health Treatment and Minors
Which parent must sign a release of records for a minor?
Biological parents. With certain legal exceptions, such as termination of parental rights, biological parents have an equal right to a child’s medical information. Without an order of the court, stepparents do not have the necessary authority to consent to the release of a minor’s medical records.
Adoptive parents must provide consent for the release of a minor child’s medical record. If the biological or adoptive parents are in the process of a separation or divorce, unless an order specifying custody has been signed a judge, all previous custody arrangements are assumed to be in force.
Can you treat my child if the parents have joint custody and only one parent consents?
In most cases this is not possible without an order from a judge or a signed and notarized document indicating you have the absolute right to consent to treatment of your child.
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