Dr Lauren McPartlan
Dr Lauren McPartlan is a highly specialised Clinical Psychologist within the areas of children, families, perinatal and adult work, with 20 years experience of working within both the NHS and Local Authority Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services.
Lauren has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, an MRes in Psychology and a BSc (Hons) in Psychology.
Children & Families
Lauren works with children and families, across all ages, offering evidence-based therapy for a range of emotional, behavioral and/or relational issues. This includes, but it is not an exhaustive list, supporting children experiencing anxiety (general, social, performance and health), low mood/depression, behaviour that challenges, relationship problems, OCD and significant family life events/disruptions.
Lauren also works with children and parents with neurodiversity, such as ADHD, ASC and AuDHD. Her interest in this area was developed in part when working at Great Ormond Street Hospital in their social communication team.
She is also particularly experienced in working with children and families who have experienced loss and bereavement, developmental trauma, single incident traumas, separation and/or attachment difficulties. This includes offering highly specialist post-adoption support assessments and interventions.
Lauren offers both individual, dyadic parent-child, parent(s)-only and/or family-based sessions. Along with liaising and offering support to schools and professionals around a family.
Perinatal & Adult
After years of working with parents and, after having her own family, another part of Lauren’s practice is supporting parents from pregnancy to childbirth and all aspects of their transition to parenthood.
Becoming a parent can bring many changes and demands, which can impact their emotional well-being and relationship with their child. Lauren offers support for postnatal anxiety and depression, and to parents who have sadly experienced birth trauma. Her work with parents involves supporting them to understand their own experiences and attachment histories and how their child(ren) can activate them, to help parents break the cycles from their past. The hope is to support parents to feel more grounded and regulated, in difficult moments, so that they can respond with empathy and clarity to themselves and their child(ren) in a way that fits their values. She also offers dyadic parent-child play-based interventions to further strengthen the parent-child relationship. Lauren strongly believes in good enough parenting not perfection. Supporting parents' own emotional well-being through developing their understanding of themselves and their children, in order to enhance the connection between parent and child(ren).
Another area of Lauren’s practice is offering support to adults who want to understand their emotional and relational needs within the context of their life stories (including significant trauma histories). This is to support their emotional well-being (e.g. anxiety, low mood, burnout) and current personal and professional relationships (e.g. attachment security, boundary setting and confidence to communicate needs).
Approach
Lauren is trained and experienced in a range of evidence-based approaches that support the above areas, such as, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassionate-focused therapy, Narrative Therapy, Systemic therapy and will adapt these approaches for neurodiversity.
Specifically for trauma and attachment related concerns she is a certified practitioner in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), and is trained in EMDR (Adult & Child), Theraplay, Therapeutic Life Story work and Therapeutic parenting.
Lauren’s approach is to be flexible, curious, empathic, and creative in her practice. She strongly believes in the importance of developing a compassionate and non-judgemental space in order for those she is working with to feel safe enough to explore the difficulties they are experiencing. Lauren will always work collaboratively and to tailor therapy to the individual and/or family in order to support change.
If you would like to get in touch and find out more, please contact Lauren.