Individual
60 min consultation with one 30 minute follow-up:
$175
Consultation services
Dr. Kimberly Cimino is a licensed clinical psychologist in Connecticut providing consultation to CT-based licensed therapists and therapeutically-engaged psychiatric providers working with complex or challenging clinical presentations. Consultation focuses on in-depth case formulation, short-term and long-term treatment planning, and milieu management.
Consultation can support providers seeing clients in outpatient practice and inpatient psychiatry. For providers working in hospital or other milieu-based settings, consultation can also extend to understanding the broader interpersonal, behavioral, and systems-level dynamics affecting treatment.
Consultation services are available to CT-licensed providers only at this time.
Areas of Consultation
Complex case formulation for therapy patients, with special focus on support for clinicians working with clientele with:
Personality pathology or traits
Complex trauma
Interpersonal dysfunction
Psychodynamic formulation and treatment planning
Dialectical behavioral therapy formulation and treatment planning
Milieu management, including understanding behavioral patterns and interpersonal dynamics within higher levels of care
Assistance with behavioral plans
Peer case consultation
Use of peer case consultation is noted to improve therapists’ understanding of the patient, therapeutic alliance, and positive feelings toward the patient1,2. It provides an enriching opportunity to assist with clinician burnout and normalize challenging emotions and countertransferences that can be used to understand the patient in a meaningful and clinically useful manner3.
References
Ghag, J., Kellett, S., & Ackroyd, K. (2021). Psychological consultancy in mental health services: A systematic review of service, staff, and patient outcomes. Psychology and psychotherapy, 94(1), 141–172. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12264
Mallard Swanson, K., Song, J., Beristianos, M., Aajmain, S., Lane, J. E. M., Landy, M. S. H., Suvak, M. K., Shields, N., Monson, C. M., & Stirman, S. W. (2021). A Glimpse into the "Black Box": Which Elements of Consultation in an EBP are Associated with Client Symptom Change and Therapist Fidelity?. Implementation research and practice, 2, 263348952110 51791. https://doi.org/10.1177/26334895211051791
Miu, A. S., Joseph, A., Hakim, E., Cox, E. D., & Greenwald, E. (2022). Peer Consultation: An Enriching Necessity Rather Than a Luxury for Psychologists During and Beyond the Pandemic. Journal of health service psychology, 48(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42843-021-00052-3
Consultation Tiers Offered
Offering individual and group consultation hours, or for specific practices ongoing weekly or biweekly team consultation groups.
Group
60 min consultation for independent therapists:
$65 per person per sitting
Practice- or team-specific group
60 min consultation, up to 5 clinicians:
$300/session
Practice- or team-specific group
90 min consultation, up to 5 clinicians:
$400/session
When you are too close to a case
For providers thinking: "I've been staring at this case for weeks and I'm too close to it."
Consultation provides an opportunity to step outside the immediacy of a challenging case and develop a more comprehensive formulation of the patient's presentation and treatment needs.
What is your approach?
Dr. Cimino’s theoretical approach is an assimilative integration technique: psychodynamic with integration of DBT techniques contingent on the patient’s level of organization and immediate needs.
Given this frame, her focus is balancing depth and pragmatism to create a treatment plan that builds long-term personality change after immediate safety and reduction of crisis is achieved.
She takes a warm and empathic approach to eliciting and understanding a clinician’s internal experience of working with a particular patient in addition to their current understanding of the patient’s presentation and treatment. Her goal is to help uncover various ways to make meaning of this internal experience when appropriate to understanding a patient formulation.
Dr. Cimino will work with clients to understand how to tune in and use countertransference responses and understand transference enactments, and subsequently supports how to use this information to inform interventions. The client will have a working formulation and evidence-based treatment plan that can be flexible as the therapy deepens.
Evidence-Based Practice
Psychodynamic therapy has an evidence base across diagnostic complexity1,3, with an edge over other modalities with regard to sustained remission for depression and report of wellbeing6. Transference-focused approaches, which is the backbone of psychodynamic theory, have been found to be specifically efficacious for borderline and narcissistic personality pathology2,9.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy additionally has an evidence base for positive outcomes in patients with borderline personality disorder in addition to other presentations with emotional dysregulation5,8.
Assimilative integration is one of the four recognized pathways to psychotherapy integration that includes one predominant and central theory, from which intervention techniques are selected and applied as rooted in a formulation7. Dr. Cimino’s psychodynamic formulations lend to both psychodynamic treatment selection as well as integration of dialectical behavioral techniques depending on the patient’s current functioning.
References
Abbas, A.A., Kisely, S.R., Town, J.M., Leichsenring, F., Driessen, E., De Maat, S., Gerber, A., Dekker, J., Rabung, S., Rusalovska, S., & Crowe, E. (2014). Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapies for common mental disorders. Cochrane Database Syst Rev CD004687
Diamond, D., Yeomans, F., & Keefe, J. R. (2021). Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for Pathological Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (TFP-N). Psychodynamic Psychiatry 49(2), 244-272
Khademi, M., Hajiahmadi, M., & Faramarzi, M. (2019). The role of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy in improving attachment patterns, defense styles, and alexithymia in patients with depressive/anxiety disorders, Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 41(1):43-50. DOI: 10.1590/2237-6089-2017-0144
Leichsenring, F., Steinart, C., & Crits-Christoph, P. (2018). On mechanisms of change in psychodynamic therapy, Psychosom Med Psychother, 64 pgs 16-22
Linehan MM, Comtois KA, Murray AM, et al. (2006). Two-Year Randomized Controlled Trial and Follow-up of Dialectical Behavior Therapy vs Therapy by Experts for Suicidal Behaviors and Borderline Personality Disorder. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 63(7):757–766. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.63.7.757
Miggiels, M., ten Klooster, P., Beekman, A., Bremer, S., Dekker, L., Janssen, C., & van Dijk, M.K. (2025). The D*Phase-study: Comparing short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy for major depressive disorder in a randomised controlled non-inferiority trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 371: 344-351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2024.10.122.
Norcross, J. C., & Goldfried, M. R. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of psychotherapy integration (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780195165791.001.0001
Wieczorek M, Kacen T, King B, Wilhelm K. (2021). The effectiveness of a short-term DBT skills group in a ‘real-world’ clinical setting. Australasian Psychiatry. 29(6):600-603.doi:10.1177/10398562211038907
Yeomans, F. E., Clarkin, J. F., Kernberg, O. F. (2015). Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Clinical Guide. United Kingdom: American Psychiatric Publishing.
Scope and requirements
Consultation does not constitute supervision, psychotherapy, or direct patient treatment. The treating provider retains responsibility for clinical decision-making and patient care.
Consultees are required to have malpractice insurance coverage whether personal or through the healthcare system in which they work.
Discuss consultation
I'm happy to connect with colleagues who are interested to learn more or discuss whether consultation might be useful for a particular case.