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Pamela Mazza © 2017. All rights reserved.
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Certified Bilingual School Counselor
Telephone: +1 (212) 466-6432
Se Habla Español
Pronouns: she/her/ella
Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Mazza Counseling & Consulting
Pamela Mazza, LMHC, EdM, MA, CSC
I work with treatment facilities educating staff and administration to identify and accommodate for a more neurodiverse population. This work creates a better outcome for clients, while increasing the client base potential for institutions.
In the field of mental health, there is little or no standard training regarding issues of neurodiversity and how they are expressed in the client. People who are part of a “neurominority” tend to absorb, process, and relate information differently from neurotypical individuals. This can appear in a variety of different ways and has myriad labels - ADHD, Dyslexia, Non-Verbal Learning Disorder (NVLD), Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the list goes on.
Like other diversity issues, handling these cases effectively requires specialized information and training; without such training professionals run the risk of inadvertently mishandling clients’ needs, creating potential ethics conflicts. The unique problem with neurodiversity issues, however, is that many people who are part of this group are never accurately identified and many professionals are never adequately trained to identify or work with these individuals.
People with processing differences are likely to develop some type of an addiction at a rate appreciably greater than the general population. They often have need of addiction services and can find themselves in treatment facilities. Unfortunately, treatment plans at such facilities often do not take into account their special needs, and individuals fail to recover. This is an unnecessary outcome for many clients; a large number could indeed succeed in mainstream treatment with certain modifications to their program.
Treatment Centers and Neurodiversity Consulting
The Need for Neurodiversity Training in Mental Health and Addiction Facilities:
