Licensed Mental Health Counselor
Certified Clinical Interventionist
Parent Coach
Clinical Interpreter
LMHC (Licensed Mental Health Counselor) and LFCCI (Love First Certified Clinical Interventionist)
I help families who are stuck
by helping parents actualize working boundaries and limits
that will help their children balance freedom with responsibility
and, ultimately, launch successfully into full adulthood.
Helping parents gain perspective and information, so they are able to recognize the best decision for their family in difficult circumstances.
Clarifying clinical information, diagnosis, behavioral patterns, and systemic dynamics that limit or threaten their family.
Leading in-person clinical interventions and transport towards residential treatment for substance and non-substance contexts, using Narrative, Existential, and Mental Health frames.
Providing an alternative to Involuntary Youth Transport for appropriate candidates who are minors.
Collaborating with parents facing complex dilemmas and their educational consultants.
Honesty, Collaboration, Curiosity, Well-being
What is a Certified Clinical Interventionist?
A Certified Clinical Interventionist is an expert that helps families approach loved ones constructively and compassionately. The aim is to help someone realize the choice of beginning residential treatment when they otherwise would not. In this way, the process of intervention is “towards residential treatment.”
A clinical interventionist is versed in the full range of diagnostics concerns, including mood disorders, trauma, anxiety disorders, OCD, thought disorders, neurodiversity, and substance disorders. These concerns, along with relational dynamics within families and developmental contexts, are among the distinct and interlocking paradigms that require training and experience to work with effectively.
Clinical Interventionists have achieved a graduate level education in some variant of psychological counseling and have established licensure as a therapist. They also hold a certification that has involved education, examination, and supervision in the various processes of intervention towards treatment.
Sometimes this role is called a “mental health interventionist.” This moniker also covers interventions involving substance or process issues, but looks behind the symptoms to the causes. If we have not yet seen the beyond the symptoms of the substance or process use disorder, the mental health part can seem irrelevant. However, people’s behaviors are meaningful; they use drugs or get lost in processes because it fixes, at least for a moment, emotional pain. Until they are healing what makes those behaviors necessary, they are only band-aiding the problem. So, every case involving use disorders also needs to take into account the whole person, the systems they inhabit, and the validity of the disordered behavior. Richard uses “Certified Clinical Interventionist,” because it is the name of his credential and, though requiring explanation, it does not throw people off.
What does a Certified Clinical Interventionist do?
The Certified Clinical Interventionist (CCI) is part of a team that helps a loved-one choose and go to a vetted, credible, and professionally selected program for treatment. Typically, that team includes an educational consultant, perhaps an existing treatment team, and a program team.
The CCI assesses the array of family, history, diagnoses, and developmental contexts to make determinations on the required approach and likelihood of completion. This information helps to empower the family in their decision making process.
A family needs to understand what it would need to do, how come, and the probabilities of certain outcomes. The CCI explains the process and explains the short-falls of alternatives they evaluate as overly-compromised.
The CCI then leads a rehearsal to train the participants in what the process will be, establishes contingencies for various probabilities that may present, and develops a working script that will allow the group to know what it is doing and how to improvise.
Once there is agreement from the loved-one, the CCI goes with them to treatment in real time. The CCI may continue involvement with the family depending on the overall picture now being carried out by the program treatment team and the educational consultant.
What makes working with Richard Curtis different?
As opposed to traditional, large agencies, Richard Curtis does this work through a private practice model. This means he carries the case through and you work get to work one-on-one with him, not subordinates. So, the process is professionally personal.
He is open and shares his authentic self with the families that he works with. Richard Curtis is an experienced clinician, as opposed to just a person with a story and a will to do good in the world. He has a knack for reading the situation, seeing the patterns, and framing the problem so everyone can be on the same side.
His first training in this discipline was for the sake of teens house-bound with anxiety disorders and no drug-use. Half of the cases he works are unrelated to substances. Even when substances are part of the picture, learning what makes substances necessary is key. Discovering what the substances are numbing (anxiety, trauma, grief, depression, loss, etc.), gives one the ability to quench the flame, instead waving at the smoke. Regardless of situations with or without drugs, humans are meaning-making beings. We want to understand our suffering. We want empowerment; we don’t want to be fixed.
How can Richard Curtis help your family?
Family problems have their own genius that turn people who love each other into obstacles. Richard Curtis helps families get unstuck from power-struggles and stalemates. By collaborating with families, he figures out how the problem relates to their systemic patterns, and how to begin a new direction out of the usual cycle.
“It is who I am. It is how I am made. It does not feel like a job. It is work, but it is what I was made for.”
“As a professional who mostly works with young-adults and teens, most frequently I am working towards wilderness programs. Some cases demand more conventional settings than wilderness, underscoring the need for proper selection. Not all programs are created equal, and each program worth its salt has its own focus that sets it apart from the rest. Rightness of fit is key. I work with minors when the context validates an alternative to involuntary youth escort. Not all families have situations that warrant residential treatment. Commonly, I help parents figure out their changing limits and boundaries as their children move towards adulthood. This can be processing the backstory for a set of pointers and perspective on how to prioritize, or can become on-going coaching.” - Richard Curtis
Your Privacy is important
You want to be working with the best and you want your privacy respected. Professional discretion and HIPAA confidentiality apply.
SERVICES
Clinical Intervention for Adults
Aligning families to allow loved ones to begin residential treatment.
Parent Coaching
Providing reflection and perspective for parents alongside their kids’ journey into adulthood.
Clinical Interpretation
Making sense of behavior, symptomotology, and inaccessable professional language.
Clinical Intervention for Minors
Providing alternatives to involunatary youth transport.
“Richard is a thoughtful, dedicated therapist who was instrumental in helping us to work as a team to enable our family member discover a path to sobriety. He is very bright and an excellent listener with deep experience in clinical interventions.” -TC
“Our young-adult son was on a path to destroying his life and our family. Our son needed a “hard reset” to get him back on track requiring the services of an interventionist. After reviewing several options, we chose Richard Curtis to perform this herculean task. Despite our fear that this was an insurmountable situation, Richard gave our family the strength and confidence to develop and execute the intervention to get our son professional help. Richard succeeded in getting our son far away from home and out of danger and into a setting to execute a recovery plan. Every year on the anniversary of the intervention I reach out to Richard to thank him for saving our son’s life! Richard is a hero in our book and is someone you can trust! The decision to hire Richard was the best parental decision we ever made!” NK
“I am beyond grateful for the kindness, support and guidance we received during not one, but two difficult times for our family. When we were lost and heartbroken, Richard helped us understand how these two family members had lost their way. With empathy, he laid out the potential outcomes resulting from important decisions we needed to make in the coming days and provided suggestions and advice on their treatment options. As a result we were able to develop an understanding of the necessity to intervene and get these two individuals the help they desperately needed. Richard provided empathy and understanding, as well as helpful language for us to use when addressing our loved ones. I have referred friends to Richard over the past couple of years and was confident he would be able to help. I hope I don’t need the support of Richard again in the future, but if I do, he will be my first call.” Client (California)
If you want to find a way to become a family that talks again
I can help you figure out when to push and when to relent
, so the love and care that is in your family can actually circulate freely.
I help parents with kids in college who don’t want to communicate
find a way to get things on the table.
They can get what they need,
and you can know they are managing on their own
without the family disintegrating into estrangement.
