Christine Finucane

I work as a chemical dependency counselor providing both individual and group counseling sessions on primarily an outpatient basis.

• Treat patients with mental health issues and dual-diagnoses such as PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder and many different forms of anxiety disorders.
• Facilitate 5 groups weekly with patients with co-occurring disorders using a mindfulness approach and a trauma-informed care approach. Groups such as mindfulness based relapse prevention, seeking safety, DBT and an orientation prescreening group .
• Diagnose clients by using DSM-V criteria and provide documentation using ASAM criteria for recommended level of care.
• Develop and update treatment plans on monthly basis with latest intervention strategies and progress notes.
• Work with and develop a therapeutic relationship with clients at all stages of change using a motivational interviewing approach and respecting where they are in their change process.
• Trained in Somatic Experiencing to help clients with trauma related behaviors and symptoms to build resilience and move away from a fight/flight/freeze response to stressful experiences.
• Work as part of an interdisciplinary team and identify and refer clients who need medical intervention such as detox, medication assisted treatment, etc.
• Work with legally mandated clients including sending reports to outside referents.
• Work with clients with diversity issues such as racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientation to provide a caring and accepting presence and to provide referrals to outside agencies to best support their diversity issues.
• Provide assessments, treatment and referrals for family members struggling with their loved one's addiction and helping to address their own challenges.
• Encourage outside support and provide list of community based recovery meetings and other resources.
• Work with clients with chronic pain who are on opiate therapy plans and help differentiate pseudo addiction from opioid use disorder.
• Trained in and utilize on-line charting, chart reviews, smart sets for efficient charting, and voice activated charting such as Dragon and Word Fluency.
• Utilize zoom, other video technology and telephone for virtual counseling especially since the pandemic.

Worked as a chemical dependency counselor in an outpatient mental health clinic situated in a medical center.

• Treated patients with mental health issues and dual-diagnoses such as PTSD, Major Depression and many different forms of anxiety disorders, etc. Also worked with adult children of alcoholics and codependency related behavior.
• Facilitated educational groups, early recovery groups and family education groups.
• Diagnosed clients by using DSM-IV criteria and documented using IDC coding guidelines.
• Performed hospital consultation for clients hospitalized on a medical unit with substance use related challenges.
• Worked on-call in the Emergency Room providing psychiatric evaluation for clients with mental health and substance use related challenges who required hospitalization on a psychiatric unit.
• Worked individually with clients at many different stages of recovery from early through longer term recovery.
• Member of a multidisciplinary team providing care for clients from a wide array of perspectives.

Worked first in a psychiatric outpatient clinic followed by a move into a day treatment setting.

• Facilitated early recovery groups, day treatment groups, longer-term recovery groups, women's groups, family education groups, codependency groups, educational groups for children whose parents attended family education groups.
• Performed individual short-term and longer-term therapy, provided education and responded to crisis situations.
• Worked on-call in the Emergency Room performing psychiatric evaluations for clients with substance use and mental health challenges and made referrals for psychiatric hospitalization.
• Trained in the Early Start Program providing counseling and referrals for pregnant women with substance use problems.
• Organized clinical documentation, treatment plans, and referrals.
• Worked with mandated clients, ordered urine drug-screens, provided documentation and case management to outside referents.
• Received supervision from a respected group therapist using Yalom's group psychotherapy model.
• Formulated treatment plan strategies with multidisciplinary teams to provide comprehensive and continuous care plan.
• Provided short-term couple's sessions for clients and their partners utilizing mainly an educational model for addiction, codependency and ACA related challenges.

I worked on a residential chemical dependency unit at the San Francisco Veteran's Administration Hospital.

• Developed and implemented detailed pre-discharge plans for clients soon to be reintegrated into community.
• Co-facilitated groups with patients on the inpatient unit focused on addiction using the medical model and addressing co-occurring disorders.
• Responsible for outpatient treatment planning at the height of the AIDS crisis. Worked with community providers to assist with housing and financial resources.
• Co-facilitated an outpatient evaluation group to assess for treatment needs in both chemical dependency and mental health counseling.
• Member of a multidisciplinary team of other social workers, psychologists, psychiatric residents and psychiatrists utilizing primarily a psychoanalytic and ego psychology framework for assessing clients.