My name is Supriya Blair, I’m a licensed clinical psychologist and founder of Dr. Blair Psychology, LLC in upstate New York. I provide mental health therapy, mindfulness training, and spiritual counsel to adults within my holistic telehealth practice.

Being a clinical psychologist who is also her own boss is very fulfilling! I consider myself a practitioner who aims to bridge the gap between clinical psychology and wellness; it has been wonderful being able to provide both, a trained clinical eye as a mental health professional, and offering a holistic approach to help clients empower themselves with a wide variety of wellness tools to address mental health and emotional challenges.

One skill that clinical psychologists benefit from having in the field is the ability to pick up behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns. In doing so, there is an opportunity to help clients gain awareness of their own patterns and move toward change. I find that incredibly helpful as a provider: to help clients voice the change they want to make in their own life and collaborating with them on that process.

My typical day and key responsibilities:

1. Review clients’ charts that I am seeing for that day. This involves reviewing their therapy progress and session goals.
2. See clients for therapy. Every session is typically a 50-minute session. Clients come into therapy for a wide variety of reasons. Common challenges addressed in therapy include assertiveness, boundary-setting, self-esteem building, communication strategies, stress reduction, mindfulness, anxiety management, exploration of values, and self-care.
3. After each session, we have to write progress notes/clinical notes. Progress notes encompass what was addressed during session, how a client is currently doing, and treatment considerations moving forward. In other words, progress notes are helpful in documenting both, a client’s progress over time, as well as longer-standing challenges to address.
4. A typical day also includes billing insurance. Some people might hire administrative staff to bill insurance; other practitioners can bill for services themselves. Billing for insurance includes sending a payor the date of service, name of the client seen, service provided, duration of service, and other specific client and provider identifying information.
5. Other administrative tasks include scheduling appointments, re-scheduling appointments, conducting phone consultations for prospective client(s), and returning phone calls. Depending on the day’s volume, those tasks could take from as little as 10-15 minutes/day to an hour or so.
6. For a new client, a clinical interview is conducted, which entails getting the client’s background history (i.e., family background, mental health history, social history, developmental history, educational/occupational background, and presenting concerns). For a client who is ending services, an ending/termination session is conducted, which entails reviewing the work done in therapy, exploring areas of continued growth, and informing the client how he/she/they can resume therapy services if needed in the future.

As the founder of my solo practice, work-life has several pros and a few cons.

Pros

• Having a telehealth practice allows me to serve clients across New York State, versus only in my local area.
• I get to choose my own hours I see clients and complete other administrative-related work.
• Choosing the clients I best serve within my niche of holistic health/mind-body-spirit.

Cons

• Having your own remote practice can feel isolating at times.
• The stigma of mental health: We are certainly at an inflection point in history, in which on top of the other continuing pandemics, mental health in this country has deteriorated. If we can continue to normalize that we all have mental health, similar to the way we all have physical and spiritual health, more attention and good work could be achieved in this field.

Naturopathic Doctor – Michael Smith N.D. BHSC (Naturopathy)

Planet Naturopath

I am a licensed naturopathic doctor who has been helping people on their wellness journey for over 15 years. I specialize in Digestion and Hormonal dy … Read More

Nurse Midwife – Rosemarie Bello Hornak CNM MSN

St Joseph’s Hospital, Paterson New Jersey

I have been a Certified Nurse Midwife for 27 years working in an inner city hospital caring for women throughout the life span. Our program began runn … Read More

Clinical Nurse Specialist – Pamela Jane Nye

I was a Clinical Nurse Specialist, responsible for the clinical practice and competence of every nurse on the unit. My work over the past 10-20 years … Read More