About
About Alison McDonald
Alison is a social worker and qualified family therapist with decades of experience helping children, adolescents, adults and families explore issues impacting on their lives. Alison has worked in several community health centres, Employment Assistance Programs, Victims of Crime, family care organisations and in private practice. She has nine years working in mental health, both adult and child and adolescent.
Alison is experienced in working with:
- Trauma across the lifespan
- Mental health concerns
- Eating disorders
- Grief and loss
- Relationship and family conflicts
- All of the challenges life can bring, such as the recent effects of COVID19
Alison has worked with individuals in both long-term psychotherapy as well as shorter therapeutic approaches. Alison’s thinking is informed by the strengths-based perspective, attachment theory and trauma informed care.
Alison’s theoretical map is Narrative therapy with a suite of other approaches such as, solution focused, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Rogerian person centred, gestalt and Jungian psychotherapy. Schema therapy and Internal family systems theory are more recent additions. Alison believes in the theory fitting the person and has a flexible and accountable practice. In family work Alison borrows ideas and techniques from all the family therapy schools.
Alison has firsthand experience of a family member with a mental health diagnosis and understands how challenging this can be, not just for the person but every member of the family. She has a full appreciation for the place grief can play in our lives and has a sensitive and warm approach to helping people work through many different adversities.
Alison is an accredited member of the Australian Association of Social workers and is the ACT representative for the Australian Association of Family Therapists. She is fully committed to ethical practice and keeping abreast of evidence-based practice.