Counseling Services

Youth ALIVE! mental health counselors take their therapeutic services into the field, meeting wherever survivors feel safe and comfortable. They provide community-based services in collaboration with our Intervention Specialists, who are trained in recognizing the symptoms of trauma that occur in survivors of violence. Youth ALIVE! counselors assist each client in creating their own road map to healing.

All of our clients are eligible for this crucial and free service in their quest to heal their trauma after violence. However, for people who have grown up in violent neighborhoods, the traditional 50-minute therapy session is not always the best approach. By bringing therapy out of the clinic and into the community, Youth ALIVE! has seen an increase in the number of clients engaged in active therapy from 3% to over 35%.

In 2022, our Counseling staff:

» Served 121 clients

» Provided 1,192 hours of services, of those, 835 hours were individual mental health hours, 179 were group hours, and 78 were individual mental health services provided through intensive individual outreach.

While there is still a big stigma in our community on mental health services, we at Youth ALIVE! know that mental health is part of physical health. We also know that while hurt people can hurt people, healed people have the power to foster healing in others. It is such an honor for me to guide our participants and their families in healing from trauma in two different languages (English and Spanish). As a bilingual, bicultural counselor, I am able to support members of my cultural community in ways that other clinicians may not be able to do.

- Angelina Gutierrez, Mental Health Counselor