Psychological Care for Children, Adults, and Families in Ottawa and across Ontario
Treatment
At Anchor Psychological Services, we provide compassionate, evidence-based therapy for children, youth, adults, and families in Ottawa and across Ontario. Our team works collaboratively to create personalized treatment plans that support healing, growth, and meaningful change.
Our Approach to Treatment
At Anchor we believe in getting to know you and creating an evidence-based treatment plan designed specifically for your individual and family needs. Treatment with psychologists on our team will always begin with an assessment to determine the nature of your struggles and provide a diagnosis if applicable.
We are committed to providing safe, inclusive, trauma-informed, and identity-affirming care. We empower individuals, caregivers and families with knowledge and skills to transform their lives. We draw from attachment-based, emotion-focused, cognitive-behavioural, dialectical-behavioural, and mindfulness/acceptance-based approaches. We offer a wide range of services to meet your needs including individual, parent, family, and group therapy and workshops.
Children and Youth
At Anchor, we know that children and youth need treatment that is suited to their age and stage of development. We recognize that they live within families, and parents and caregivers are powerful members of the treatment team. Using evidence-based approaches, we work flexibly between individual, family, and parent-only sessions to ensure that every child and youth gets the best chance at working through their emotional, academic, or mental health challenges.
Adults
Treatment for adults at Anchor Psychological Services is aimed at providing a safe, welcoming space to address client concerns. We use evidence-based treatments and develop a strong alliance with our clients to ensure that therapy is tailored to the individual and meets their unique needs. We also recognize that many adults need additional supports on their treatment team, and whenever appropriate we include those in their support network (parents, spouses, other caregivers) to boost the effectiveness of the work.
Family Therapy & Parent / Caregiver Coaching
When families are struggling with emotion, conflict, communication, and family relationships, family therapy is the way through. Family therapy typically includes all members of a family, and can include members of the family from different households. At Anchor, we believe that strong family relationships make for stronger individuals. We help you navigate relationships with a variety of family therapy approaches, including systemic, solution-focused, and emotion-focused family therapy.
Parent Coaching at Anchor can occur whether or not your child or loved one is also being seen. If you are supporting a child or loved one with emotional or mental health struggles, no matter their age, our professionals will teach you skills in emotion and behaviour coaching that can help them return to psychological health.
Groups
Group therapy can be a highly effective treatment as a stand-alone or to augment individual work. Participating in a group can help clients feel less alone in their struggles, and can allow for individuals to practice important skills in a safe environment. Groups are also a cost-effective way of receiving psychological services and are covered under most insurance plans.
Workshops
Four Practical Ways to Support Your Loved One’s Mental Health: A Workshop for Caregivers
Anchor was the first private practice in Ottawa to offer a two-day Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) caregiver workshop aimed at helping parents and other caregivers learn the critical skills of emotion coaching, relationship repair, behaviour coaching and processing blocks to support their loved one. The workshop is facilitated by our co-directors, Drs. Katherine Henderson and Shari Mayman, who are certified supervisors and trainers in EFFT and co-authors of the first clinician manual for this approach. They are known for their warm, engaging, and highly interactive approach. Since 2013, we have run over 40 in-person and online two-day workshops. For some, this workshop is a stand-alone treatment. For others, it is a critical jump-start to other therapeutic work.
Other Offerings
Anchor provides other workshops on a variety of topics including nutrition for pre and post pregnancy, family nutrition, burn-out, and anxiety in youth.
Online Courses
Anchor is developing evidence-based online on-demand courses to provide an independent treatment option that is affordable and accessible with no wait time. These courses will be helpful for those on our waitlist, to augment treatment that you are receiving at Anchor or elsewhere, and to provide education and skills to support those unable to engage in treatment at the moment. Anchor’s course offerings for clients can be found here.