Maria Paula De Virgilio

Maria has worked as a Psychologist for the last 19 years and in that time, she has held a number of roles including clinician, senior clinician, clinical services manager, principal psychologist and Board Certified Supervisor.​

 

Maria has worked in a range of settings including:

• Hospital/Community Mental Health Services

• Disability Services 

• Mental Health Services

• Severe Behaviour Intervention Services

• Occupational Rehabilitation and Counselling

• Mainstream and Special Developmental Schools

• Private Practice.

 

Additionally she has had the opportunity to lead teams of Allied Health professionals in a number of her roles and continues to provide supervision/training to other registered psychologists and provisionally registered psychologists.​

 

Maria primarily works with children and adolescents, however also has extensive training in working with adults and families. In her work, Maria therapeutic approach draws on a number of theoreticalframeworks such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Acceptance and CommitmentTherapy, Dialectic Behaviour Therapy, Person-centered Counselling, BehaviouralFamily Therapy, Behavioural Modification and Motivational Interviewing.

 

In addition to her generalist training, and in the treatment of mental health conditions such as Acute Psychiatric Disorders, Personality disorders, Substance Abuse Disorders, Adjustment Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Depression, PTSD, Grief/ loss, and employment/vocational problems, Maria has undertaken extensive training in the treatment and assessment of individuals with neuro-developmental disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD.​

 

For the last 8 years, Maria's workload has been shared with her therapy assistant, Frankie the 'Sausage dog', and together they have converted traditional therapy to Animal Assisted therapy.  ​