Melanie Giarratano
Empathic counselor blending practical skills and insight
LMHC, LCMHC New York
- Experience
- 4 years in practice
- Focus areas
- Stress, Anxiety, Addictions, Relationship
- Approaches
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Client-Centered Therapy
- Languages
- English
About Melanie
Melanie Giarratano is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with both LMHC and LCMHC credentials who brings a background in neuroscience and mental health counseling to her clinical work.
Background and approach
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from the University of Delaware and a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from SUNY College at Old Westbury. Her training included research into stress and trauma responses as well as graduate work grounded in psychodynamic theory, which informs how she understands development, family context, and relationship patterns.
With four years of professional experience, Melanie has provided group and individual therapy across inpatient and outpatient settings, and she currently works in an inpatient psychiatric environment with clients who have significant trauma histories.
She draws on a range of methods - including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, mindfulness practices, motivational interviewing, and client-centered techniques - tailoring treatment to each person’s needs. Melanie emphasizes practical skills such as identifying thinking patterns and developing coping strategies, and she encourages self-care and balanced living as part of the therapeutic process.
Her approach blends evidence-informed techniques with empathic, nonjudgmental support, guiding clients through present-focused goals while attending to deeper developmental and relational influences.
Online approaches that combine skills and insight
Melanie uses Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help clients identify and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors; this approach is practical and often involves learning specific skills such as recognizing cognitive distortions and practicing behavioral experiments. She also employs Dialectical Behavior Therapy techniques that focus on emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness, which can be helpful for intense mood swings, anger, and relationship difficulties. Finally, client-centered methods provide empathic listening and support to help motivated clients explore goals and build self-directed change.
Choosing the right approach is a collaborative process. Melanie works with clients to weigh their needs, goals, and preferences and will adapt methods over time so therapy feels like a partnership rather than a prescribed program.
Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, and text-based messaging, making it easier to fit sessions into busy schedules and to maintain continuity of care across locations. These formats allow licensed professionals to offer consistent therapeutic work, skills coaching, and homework review while accommodating different communication styles and lifestyles.
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Areas of expertise
Primary focus
Also works with
Additional focus areas
Therapeutic approaches
Experience
4+ years
Licensed
New York, Utah
Languages
English