Practice Areas
Dr. Peters offers several specialty areas to include:
Immigration Psychological Assessment:
When filing for certain immigration benefits, and when defending oneself from deportation in a case that is pending before an Immigration Judge, a good psychologist can make a great deal of difference. Dr. Peters has been working with immigration issues over the past 12 years and to date has assisted over eight hundred individuals/families with finding successful resolution to their immigration issues. Psychological evaluations can have a significant impact on a successful immigration application, and Dr. Peters has a deep understanding of what constitutes a good immigration psychological report. Her expertise and clinical background in areas to include assessment of personality and mental health disorders, emotional/physical trauma, domestic violence, mood disorders, child development, cognitive assessment, and forensics add the necessary expertise to her opinions and her evaluations. She has years of experience in working with immigrant populations from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Dr. Peters routinely provides evaluations in cases of U visa, VAWA (spousal/partner abuse), I-601 Waivers, Asylum, and Medical Certification for Disability Exceptions (N-648). She has provided expert testimony in Federal Immigration Court on numerous occasions.
Post-Trauma Treatment:
Emotional trauma can result from a variety of life experiences. Trauma and trauma based symptoms and struggles do not just occur following the major traumas of life. Emotional and psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security, making you feel helpless and vulnerable. Traumatic experiences often involve a threat to life or safety, but any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and alone can be traumatic, even if it doesn’t involve physical harm. It is not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic, but your subjective emotional experience of the event. The more frightened and helpless you feel, the more likely you are to be traumatized. An individual’s response to an emotionally upsetting event can cause a variety of uncomfortable symptoms that can be effectively treated with trauma focused treatment.
Dr. Peters has 20 years of experience in the area of treating trauma. She has worked with thousands of trauma survivors to include sexual abuse/assault, physical assault, domestic violence, combat related trauma, child trauma, medical trauma, MVA, and loss. Dr. Peters has advanced training in understanding, assessing and treating post-trauma issues and PTSD. She uses proven and empirically validated treatments with survivors of trauma to improve the outcome of successful and lasting treatment effects. Dr. Peters is trained in the use of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and holds the highest credentials, Approved Consultant, recognized by the Eye Movement and Desensitization International Association. Dr. Peters routinely provides consultation to other mental health care providers in the use of EMDR with their clients and provides consultation to those clinicians looking to obtain advanced credentials in EMDR.
Psychological Assessment:
Psychological assessments answer a question. Before any treatment or remediation can begin, it is important to understand the nature of the problem or difficulty. A psychological assessment is the necessary first step in determining the strengths and weaknesses in an individual’s functioning when that functioning has been called into question, either by displaying actions that are unexpected or by not displaying actions that are expected, in a given circumstance or environment. Psychological assessment involves the observation, measurement and evaluation of an individual’s adaptive functioning. Assessments are used to assess the developmental, behavioral, academic, psychological, neuropsychological and personality functioning of an individual.
Forensic Assessment:
The purpose of a forensic assessment is to determine the facts under question in a legal matter such as a lawsuit or a criminal case. Psychological assessment findings may be utilized for a variety of purposes in family, civil, criminal and clinical matters. Dr. Peters offers assessment in cases involving clinical diagnosis, the establishment of impaired judgment or diminished capacity, custody determinations, allegations of sexual abuse, and the establishment of trauma or other personal psychological injury.