Dr Kate Alessia can offer a range of assessments, some of which can be conducted as stand-alone assessments, while others occur during the course of therapy. Medicare rebates are not available for assessments that are not conducted as part of therapy.

Assessments include:

Most of the therapy offered by Kate is short-term, designed to achieve long-lasting results in the minimum time by using therapies proven to be effective. Longer-term therapy is available for those who require it, as are periodic wellness checks or ‘fine tuning’ sessions.

Issues with which Kate has extensive experience include anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis, post-traumatic stress, other mental health issues, sexual abuse, relationships, infertility, parenting, step-parenting, adjustment to disability, adoption, work stress, family conflict, trauma, and childhood issues.

Services To Children 

Kate works with families of children with anxiety, behavioural issues, developmental delay, learning problems, unhappiness, and excessive reactions to life events. While sometimes the work involves play therapy with children, much of it also includes assisting parents with strategies to address their child’s issues themselves. Assessment of underlying issues (eg ADHD, autism, learning disorders, intellectual disability) can be incorporated as necessary.

Services To Adolescents

Adolescence is a time of rapid change and sometimes stressful experiences (eg school pressures, peer problems, family changes) and counselling/therapy can help with these. Therapy can be provided direct to teenagers alone or with their parents or wider family members. Alternatively, sometimes parents might choose to attend therapy alone to discuss strategies that they can use to enhance their relationship with their teen and address the issues at home themselves.

Services To Adults

Life involves constant change, and therapy can be a helpful way to gain new insights, find new strategies for handling the pressures, and to adapt to life’s challenges (eg chronic health issues, relationship breakdown, work stress). Mental health problems such as depression and anxiety are very common and are best addressed through therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy or interpersonal therapy) which provide new skills for overcoming these challenges both immediately and in the future.

Dr Kate Alessia offers supervision to health and welfare professionals from a range of backgrounds. The frequency, type and format of supervision varies according to the needs, experience and preferences of the individuals involved. Supervision can be provided individually or in small groups.

Supervision sessions are generally up to 50 minutes long. They can include discussion of specific cases or of more general issues. Time can be spent in the discussion of one situation or of a variety of topics.

Supervision is not therapy, although it can include the examination of how aspects of personal life affect work with others.

Kate’s supervision style draws on numerous theoretical frameworks and the therapeutic modes in which she operates, which include narrative therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy, existential therapy, transactional analysis, gestalt therapy, reality therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, play therapy, hypnotherapy, humanistic psychology, systemic theories and positive psychology.

Supervision is offered at a fee less than that of therapy as a contribution to the community and the field of counselling.