Dr. Kira West

Psychotherapist

Private Practice

March 1991 – Present (25 years 2 months)

-• Conduct initial screening, psychosocial and risk assessments of patients and family members to identify origins and duration of presenting clinical issues and complex, relational patterns, resistance to change and opportunity for growth.
• Built detail treatment plans with ongoing assessment and evaluation.
• Provide psychotherapy services to a diverse population of adults, couples, and children.
• Primary assessment and treatment modalities include: Cognitive and Behavioral, Behavior Management and Behavior Modification with specialism in PTSD, family and relationship issues, chronic anxiety.
• Focus on Crisis Intervention and EMDR.
• Conducted testing methods including MPI, Bender Gestalt and Rorschach.
• Provided Marital Therapy to train in reflective listening, communication skills, address conflict, ambivalence and anger management.
• Geriatric Specialist;in depth psychotherapy and family therapy with the aging
• Somatic Experience and Inner Child work

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist

Century Community Charter School, Inglewood, CA

May 2004 – June 2005 (1 year 2 months)

• Facilitated individual therapy, focused on decreasing symptoms associated with domestic violence, ADD / ADHD and PTSD.
• Designed, Implemented and reviewed continuous assessment treatment plans.
• Designed and delivered programs for parenting skills, educational services on sexual abuse and alcoholism.
• Conducted testing methods including MPI, Bender Gestalt and Rorschach.
• Treatment modalities include Cognitive and Behavioral, Behavior Management and Behavior Modification.

Behavior Specialist

Independent Contractor at West side Regional Center, Los Angeles, CA

March 2002 – June 2003 (1 year 4 months)

• Conducted psychosocial assessments, diagnosis and Behavioral therapies for children and adolescents with learning disabilities, including autism, developmental disorders, ADD and ADHD.
• Provided Marital Therapy to train in reflective listening, communication skills, address conflict, ambivalence and anger management.
• Treated families with symptoms from domestic violence and provided crisis intervention.
• Designed, Implemented and reviewed c continuous assessment treatment plans.
• Worked with Families and provided training of parenting skills.
• Managed intake, assessment and diagnosis, plus the record keeping and data management of clinical documentation for processing court and DCFS documentation.

Behavior Specialist/Director

Brentwood Center, Los Angeles, CA

August 1994 – August 2000 (6 years 1 month)

• Provided psychotherapy to a diverse student population using CBT, Solution Focused, Brief Therapy and Crisis Intervention techniques.
• Conducted evaluations, risk assessment and diagnostics and planned treatments following the clinical guidelines for documentation from the Dept. of Mental Health.
• Designed and reviewed behavior programs and individual education plans for autistic and developmentally disabled children.
• Conducted workplace based interpersonal communication workshops.
• Supervised MFT interns providing clinical oversight and training
• Attended bi-monthly management meetings with President and Board of Directors

Alive is the biofeedback system I have long been waiting for! It has everything I need as a psychotherapist. The combination of high-quality SCL and HRV feedback helps me to achieve treatment goals without having to deal with complicated instrumentation or having to use different systems each time.

What makes Alive such a great system is its excellent graphing options, wonderful breathing coach, and that it lets you advance with training using a variety of wonderful environments, mini-games and more challenging games. The gradual nature of the training enables me to first teach the client basic self-regulating techniques and then advance to scenarios where he or she has to use the technique under growing difficulty levels ̶ resembling the stressful world outside.

DeLee Lantz, Ph.D., BCIA

Alive is terrific for kids and teens. So far I have used it primarily with 11 to 16 year-olds. With other systems, I could never get an accurate heart rate signal from many younger children because they were so wiggly, and I often had to have very short training sessions because of their short attention span. With Alive, these children sit quietly and don’t want to stop, even after 55 minutes. To quote one young boy who caught on immediately: “I have to stay calm even when things get hard.”