Counsellor Profile

Secondary Address

• North Vancouver

Counselling Practice Website: 

http://www.apexpsychologicalservices.com

Practice Info

Practice Information: 

Dr. Gabriela Ionita has been successfully providing counselling to children, youth, young adults, and families for over a decade. She has worked with clients struggling with a variety of issues and has come to recognize the importance of providing a supportive and safe environment in which clients can be helped to move through the challenges they are facing. Gabriela is skilled at engaging clients and her friendly non-judgemental personality make children, youth, and young adults feel at ease in the work they do together. In addition to counselling, Gabriela is able to provide advocacy, consulting with schools (e.g. helping schools implement strategies to better support the child/youth/young adults’ needs), and outreach.  She has found that clients often find it helpful to gain practical tools that they can implement in their lives right away while in the long-term working on the underlying issues impacting their mental health. 

Gabriela provides effective counselling for mild to severe issues, including the following common problems:

• Anxiety (general, social/performance, separation, panic, agoraphobia, phobias)
• Bullying and assertiveness
• Behavioural difficulties 
• Depression 
• Identity confusion, sexual identity and gender identity
• Low self-esteem
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Parenting challenges
• Procrastination
• School avoidance
• School challenges
• Self-harm
• Self-regulation
• Sleep difficulties
• Stress
• Trauma and abuse (including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Approach

While Gabriela integrates a number of treatment modalities to provide clients with an individualized approach that will meet their unique needs, she also finds it important to integrate evidenced-based treatments (research proven) into her practice. As Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is an approach supported by a vast amount of research, she often implements CBT, especially in the treatment of stress, anxiety, OCD, trauma, and depression.

 Education

• Ph.D. Counselling Psychology; McGill University
• M.A. Counselling Psychology; Simon Fraser University
• B.A. (Psychology): First Class Honours; Simon Fraser University

Gabriela regularly seeks opportunities to continue her training to provide the most up-to-date best-practices in the field.  This year alone she has completed further training in: working with LGBTQ clients, ADHD in the home and school, OCD (she helped facilitate the OCD teen group at BC Children’s Hospital), and concurrent disorders.

Training

Gabriela Ionita initially trained in Narrative, Humanistic, Motivational Interviewing, and Solution Focused Therapy. Since then she has gained specialized training at the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Clinic in Montreal. She completed intensive training in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, a treatment designed to reduce the use of unhealthy coping strategies such as self-injury. She continued her training at Sannich Child and Youth Mental Health where she gained further depth in numerous therapeutic interventions, facilitated numerous groups, and consulted regularly with schools. Throughout her training she developed skills in applying art, play, and sand in therapy (when appropriate).

Recently Gabriela has worked as the primary clinician at the only Adolescent Psychiatric Day Treatment program in Vancouver, a program designed to support youth struggling with severe anxiety and depression. 

Gabriela is approved to provide counselling through the Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP).

Contact Gabriela today for a free 15 minute consultation or to set up an appointment.

Client Fee Individuals: 

150

Client Fee Couples/Families: 

150

Availability: 

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available
Afternoon	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available
Evening	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available

For further information, visit Gabriela Ionita's website.

Read more about Gabriela Ionita

Supervision, teaching, and research

Gabriela has provided supervision to Master’s level counsellors completing their practicum placements through McGill University and has taught master’s level courses at McGill University. She has developed and presented numerous workshops. Her workshop on anxiety in childhood and adolescence has been gaining attention and she has been invited to present this workshop in a number of schools in the lower mainland and at the Learning Disabilities Association of Vancouver.

Gabriela’s research has focused on the factors that make therapy effective for clients.  She has been published in a number of journals and magazines.  One of her papers examining the use of measures to make therapy more effective won the best paper of the year award from Canadian Psychology in 2015.  Her work in this area has been consistently funded by competitive research grants and results from her work have been presented at numerous conferences.  She recently consulted with Veteran’s Affairs on their implementation of measures to monitor client progress.

Website

Gabriela has developed a website that provides information on a variety of mental health issues and links to resources for youth and parents.  If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety, depression, self-injury or suicidal ideation please take a look at Apex Clinical Services’ website at www.apexpsychologicalservices.com.  

Additional information

Gabriela is the mother of two amazing and very spirited children. Being a mother has provided her with an additional layer of understanding of the challenges faced by families and the incredible strengths that can be discovered within each family.