Client : Female ‘Daisy Level’
Also in attendance was her mother
Attended approximately 6 months
Daisy was a student in Gloucester City who had a multitude of disabilities. She was developmentally delayed and had other psychological disorders. She had originally met the POI counselor through coming to an older sibling's counseling sessions. During this time the mother and counselor noticed that Daisy connected to the counselor which is something that she had a lot of trouble with, due to some of her disorders. They discussed that perhaps she may benefit from coming in for counseling.
A few months passed and we received a call from this client's mother saying that Daisy was suffering from some psychotic symptoms and wanted to see if they could start coming to us for sessions. They decided to come to Positive Outcomes because of the comfort Daisy already had with us, and due to them being dissatisfied with their current counselor at a local agency. We scheduled an appointment and found out that Daisy was having some violent visions and hearing voices several times a day. These visions and voices of course were extremely scary to her and worried her mother immensely. We discovered that her symptoms had been triggered through some stressful situations in school.
Through our counseling we used techniques to work through these visions and to keep her safe. The counselor used techniques that were more suitable for her developmental level, and also helped mom deal with Daisy at home. We also made sure that the counseling was centered on working with Daisy directly with input from her mother, not sit her aside( like some of her past counselors have done) and speak only to her mother. We knew that by exposing her to techniques that she could understand, that we could increase her coping skills, and thus help her deal with these types of life stresses.
We believe that Daisy was comfortable with the counselor and responsive to POI due to prior exposure through her siblings counseling and that it was in a non-threatening place such as a school. Finally, due to working in the school we were able to help the family understand how the school handles certain situations and thus alleviate some of the stresses on the family. By the end of counseling this Daisy’s symptoms had dropped to only once a week and sometimes less. In additions, she reported that they no longer scared her due to utilizing some of our techniques.