Hugh Simmons, CSW
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Hugh Simmons a licensed clinical social worker with the six-year R code psychotherapy privilege, the highest credentialing available in New York State for the profession of social work.
He also a Board Certified Diplomate (BCD) in Clinical Social Work, a national credential offered by the American Board of Examiners in Clinical Social Work (ABE). The BCD is a rigorous national credentialing available in the field of social work, requiring those who hold it to recertify each year and to pursue ongoing post-masters clinical education.
He received his MSW in 1992 from Yeshiva University, after which he worked for a number of years providing agency-based services. These include developing and directing an intensive model family psychotherapy and intervention program for youth involved in the juvenile justice system (the only such program to serve the borough of Staten Island), directing a community-based outpatient substance abuse treatment program for youth and adults, and launching and directing a model citywide short-term psychotherapy and case management program funded by the Dept. of Mental Health for youth coming home from secure detention.
Ongoing training is an essential component of quality psychotherapeutic practice. In addition to his agency-based experiences, all of which provided ongoing post-masters training, he have advanced training in both Gestalt and family systems psychotherapeutic theories - through The Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training and the Ackerman Institute for the Family. He also have advanced psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center.
He began his private practice in 1997, focusing on such issues as divorce, gay and lesbian concerns and parenting acting-out adolescents. He practice has since expanded to include adoption (for individuals and couples gay and straight) trauma, substance abuse, ACOA, chronic medical conditions, and more.
In 1998 he founded and for the first year led the Brooklyn Psychotherapist Community, an ongoing, multidisciplinary peer-support and education network of over fifty independent mental health practitioners (including psychologists, social workers, licensed counselors, pastoral counselors and psychiatrists). This community has evolved over the years into an ongoing, vibrant network of therapists who continue to look to each other for clinical support and continuing clinical education.
From December 2001 to January 2005 , with his colleague Therese Bimka, CSW and others, he launched, co-produced and co-hosted Frontiers: The Brooklyn Cable Psychotherapy Journal, a community-access television show about psychotherapy, specifically focused towards residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Their mission at Frontiers was to provide quality information about cutting-edge issues in psychotherapy. The program no longer airs but was a great experience for all of them who contributed to it.