Open Paths Counseling Center

11/13/2025

The vision of Open Paths Counseling Center is to eliminate three specific barriers to psychotherapy for Angelenos, one of which is cultural. We not only seek to have a diverse staff but we also provide training in culturally affirming care.

11/12/2025

If ten people look at the same image, you might get 10 different stories depending on social conditioning, education - and how brains process information. Neurotypical and neurodivergent are words that help describe those different processes.

11/11/2025

11/10/2025

There are a few days left to apply for the Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology program! Applications are due by Nov. 15.

Low-residency and traditional class formats are available, with flexible class structures to fit your timeline, academic needs, and course load capacity. Students can tailor their education even further through the program’s our unique and richly stimulating specializations and tracks in Addiction and Recovery, Child Studies, General Practice, LGBT-Affirmative Psychology, Professional Clinical Counselor, Psychological Trauma Studies, and Spiritual and Depth Psychology.

Learn more here: https://www.antioch.edu/academics/psychology/clinical-psychology-masters-programs/

11/05/2025

For most of her formative years, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence sought to be a physician in honor of a brother who had died before she was born. In pursuit of this, she earned her undergraduate degree at Cornell and eventually her medical degree from Columbia. At Columbia, she studied under the renowned pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, who advocated for connections between physical, social, and mental health. This may have stayed with her through her pediatric practice; after years of treating children whose difficulties extended beyond physical illness, she returned to school to pursue psychiatric training. Finding that child psychiatry also offered little framework for understanding the specific pressures facing Black families in mid-century America, she eventually developed an approach that took into account how segregation, economic exploitation, and daily discrimination affected family functioning and children's emotional lives. In 2003, with decades of service, teaching, and leadership behind her, Swarthmore College awarded her an honorary doctorate, saying that her work "markedly strengthened the social and ethical awareness of the field and inspired in it deeper appreciation for the resilience of spirit at the heart of every child."

Her work with families revealed both trauma and resilience, showing how Black parents created protective factors despite systemic barriers. Lawrence treated individual children while advocating for social changes that would reduce those barriers.

10/31/2025

Research says horror movies can help some people manage anxiety by providing a safe space to practice facing fear. You're in control. You can pause it. Nobody's actually in danger.

Though… you spend the next week unable to shower without leaving the bathroom door open. We're not speaking from experience, of course…

The real benefit? Learning what works for YOUR brain. Some people leave a horror movie feeling accomplished. Others leave it feeling like they need to sleep with the lights on for a month.

Both responses tell you something useful about how you process fear. That's the kind of self-knowledge therapy builds on.

10/29/2025

10/29/2025

Domestic violence creates three roles: the person causing harm, the person harmed, and those—often children—forced to witness. Fernando Mederos has dedicated decades to working with the first group, specifically Latino men who complete court-mandated programs but continue abusing their families.

Realizing that their life conditions needed to be taken into account, Mederos rebuilt intervention from scratch. Bilingual group curricula became his foundation, in which men examine how migration trauma and gender role shifts intersect with their violence. He trained facilitators to recognize abuse tactics specific to immigrant relationships: threatening deportation, confiscating documents, controlling access to translation.

​His work has become foundational. With resources like "Men Who Batter: Intervention and Prevention Strategies in a Diverse Society," and curricula such as EVOLVE and "Fathering After Violence," his methods have been adopted in courts and agencies nationwide. Today, he continues to train professionals internationally, emphasizing that effective intervention must account for the cultural and social context in which violence occurs.

10/24/2025

Note the test. Note that test results should be supported with a clinical diagnosis but be curious.

10/23/2025

Dr. Barbara Stanley earned worldwide respect for her decades of su***de prevention research and innovation. At Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, she co-developed the Safety Planning Intervention, a tool that helps those at risk for su***de outline their own coping steps and identify support sources—making crisis planning simple, actionable, and widely replicable. Her work stretched beyond research: Stanley authored hundreds of papers, steered su***de prevention programs for veterans and public health systems, and mentored a generation of clinicians. She overcame institutional barriers as a woman in science, showing both tenacity and warmth in her collaborations. At home, colleagues remember her wit, generosity, and fierce advocacy for ethical research.