Kristen Huber is a New Jersey native born and raised in Ocean County. After spending a decade living in the Pacific Northwest Kristen followed her heart home and completed her graduate work in Professional Counseling at Monmouth University. She has been working with youth and their families in Ocean County for 15 years. Her private practice, Jersey Shore Ecotherapy, now seven years in, is the first practice of its kind on the eastern seaboard. Kristen translated outdoor adventure-based therapy to an outpatient setting. She offers her clients walk and talk, stand up paddle boarding and wind therapy options and access to the local parks, creeks and beaches. Kristen masterfully uses Nature as her co-facilitator to help restore mental health and wellbeing to her clients.
Kristen's Presentations
keynote
An Integrated Mental Health Wellness Care Plan
Integrating the Caring Collaboratively
Join us for lunch to explore how integrated mental health care can work to create a care plan that is truly integrated and innovative in approaching whole person, whole body and mind wellness. A multi-disciplinary panel of approaches involving psychiatry, psychotherapy, eco therapy, trauma informed yoga, sand play, art therapy, and breath work will explore a case presentation together in a grand rounds format. The panel will be demonstrating a practice model that moves integrated mental health care, from the periphery of “complementary and alternative” to the front-line treatment of choice. An outpatient “plus” level of care, where an integrated mental health team works to provide a client multiple sessions per week working collaboratively with the client and each other.
The grand rounds format will be utilized, where a complex client presentation, including intersectionality as a key element, will be examined first though the individual lens of each discipline. Following will be an active discussion of how the team would work to synthesize a comprehensive and cohesive wellness plan building and complimenting on the work of each discipline.
Together is always more, there are so many parts to the human experience, it is easy to become overwhelmed when working alone in support of a client so desperate for recovery. The panel will demonstrate the profound benefits of working collaboratively, where traditional western medicine meets holistic and expressive approaches under the same sky and in the same healing universe. The human condition is multiple, no symptom or suffering happens without many conditions also being present- our approaches need to mirror this truth effectively.
In this workshop participants will receive an introduction to Ecotherapy, the practice of working with clients while in nature. It has been well documented that nature has a positive and immediate effect on the nervous system. Facilitating a reconnection to nature can improve and support mental health and wellbeing. So how can Counselors use this abundant resource (nature) to generate deeper connection, growth and healing for their clients?
Together, in this workshop we will explore using nature as nurture through the lens of reciprocity in the nature-human connection. Ethical considerations will be discussed and an experiential nature walk will give us the opportunity to play with gentle and practical nature based interventions. Let’s get wild!
