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Connecting people of all means to quality, relationship-centered therapy

Deb D'Arcangelo is the CEO of Council for Relationships, a nonprofit organization that provides individual, couple, and family therapy to people throughout the greater Philadelphia area. The group currently encompasses more than 60 therapists and psychiatrists (as well as more 50 clinical interns) in 10 offices and community-based locations in region. Additionally, Council also provides education and training to mental health professionals and conducts behavioral health research through a number of different programs.

EDWIN WARFIELD: Can you give us some of the history and background of the Council for Relationships before you became CEO? Take us through your programs. What’s unique about your approach?

DEB D’ARCANGELO: Our founder is Emily Hartshorne Mudd. In 1932, she started our organization as the Marriage Council of Philadelphia. At that time, in marriages, often the husband was the decision-maker and the wife did not have as much of a voice. To level the playing field there, you would have couple therapy, so the husband and wife would be able to communicate better, and that would improve their relationship. That’s been carried over to work with couples, families, and individuals as well. Eighty-five years later, we’ve expanded to be the size that we are, but it’s still with the same principles: How do you have people in relationships work together and figure out how they can strengthen their relationships?

There is therapy for individuals and we do use the family systems approach, which is really looking at everybody in the context of their relationships. So, even if an individual comes to us, they’re looked at in the context of their other relationships and—even if they’re not involved with their family—their support systems, or their friends and their acquaintances. That’s why we’re called the Council for Relationships.

We have 10 offices. We have two in Philadelphia, six in the Philadelphia suburbs, and two in New Jersey. We have 65 therapists, a half-dozen psychiatrists, and 50 interns who are all providing high-quality therapy. They have more than 40 specialty areas. They work with individuals, couples, and families. They provide workshops and classes to really help people address their needs.

We also have our education programs and also professional development programs. Our education programs include a 75-year-old postgraduate certificate in Couple and Family Therapy Program; it’s been around for a long time and trained a lot of people, so if somebody might have a degree in social work or be in another healthcare field, and wants to become a couple and family therapist, they would go through that program. That also includes a clergy track and a sex therapy track. We also have a masters program for 10 years with Thomas Jefferson University in couple and family therapy, and that’s been a very successful program. We have 20 students a year graduating from that program over the last 10 years. We also provide continuing education credits for professionals in mental health, through a variety of programs offered throughout the year.

Finally, our research program is the Transcending Trauma Project, which has been going on for about 20 years and we have a committee, a group of people who are involved in that research, which is led by Bea Hollander-Goldfein as Director and Nancy Isserman as Co-Director. That research has looked at Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren. It’s very unique because, as far as we know, it’s one of the only projects where there are interviews of the survivors—the children and grandchildren—from the same family, so you can see the thread of the impact on the members of the same family. It’s taught a lot about resilience and it’s amazing to learn what those families have learned from the Holocaust, and of course there’s all of the negativity, but there is also a lot of positivity. Those families have a lot of resilience, they have a lot of hope for the future, which seems to be because they have an understanding: “if our family could survive this, we can really survive anything.” And so, [going through] those things that might have more of a negative effect on people who have not had to go through as much, [these survivors] learn that they can really have resilience and hope for the future.

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ABOUT NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Knight Frank (NKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NKF's 15,000 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NKF's strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NKF's full-service platform comprises BGC's real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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