Counselors - Oak Park, IL

"Filed with the IL Dept. of Financial & Professional Regulation ... "I sought out Mr. Hughes for marital counseling & attended approximately 10+ couple sessions over a 3 month period. Towards the end of that period I expressed to him during several meetings that group discussions were so heavily moderated after the first few minutes that little opportunity existed to voice many thoughts I had waited for days to carefully express. I further expressed to him that my urgent desire to be heard more during sessions resulted in part from the fact that my wife refused to discuss many subjects without him present; in other words, his one hour sessions (approximately every 7-10 days) were the only available window for communication with my spouse about sensitive subjects. It wasnt my expectation at all that Mr. Hughes would fix my marriage for me, but I never expected him to unethically enable its further demise by abusing his position as a licensed clinical counselor. Over 3 months of counseling I grew to find his services increasingly suspect & unprofessional for a multitude of reasons: 1) he occasionally glossed over subjects by grossly oversimplifying them (w/o allowing further discussion); 2) he vaguely criticized my behavior during solo sessions yet, when asked, often could not sufficiently elaborate or even suggest healthier alternatives; & 3) he suspended couple sessions indefinitely to counsel us individually despite my much expressed concern that no opportunity existed in his absence to apply the recurring advice he did give. Unfortunately the space limitations of this form wont allow me to fully specify exactly what those actions were to illustrate the three examples above. However two unrelated incidents stand out as so grossly & overtly unethical that they must be further described here. During my last couple session I attempted to briefly read from my notes a few examples of actions exemplifying my love for my wife. This occurred after telling Mr. Hughes how important it was to me & expressing serious concern that the opportunity may never materialize. Minutes after this casual conversation the session began when my wife arrived, & Mr. Hughes shockingly refused to allow me to read from my notes; he explicitly told me at that point that "whatever you are about to say will only make things worse" & threatened to kick me out if I continued arguing the point. This reaction completely destroyed my dwindling confidence in his services particularly because my censored words supported his later discussion of adding substance to words with actions. I highly question his professional integrity because his actions are designed more to prolong client relationships rather than to truly help people. Perhaps the best example of this occurred when he discouraged my wife from seeing another therapist with me. When I asked her for this, Mr. Hughes quickly interrupted with the remark "she doesnt have to do that" such that it suggestively discouraged compliance by inaccurately framing my request as a hostile demand." -James Tito (913) 645-4643"

"If you are a coparent (perhaps especially a father) do not seek care for your child from Karina. When my child was assumed to be in a "good place" and sessions were uneventful and often ended short, my daughter was in crisis. She began viciously lashing out at her sister. I raised this as a serious concern that I needed help with. "I ignore most of it because I don't know what to do, but I can't much longer." Then I never heard about it again. And there was no improvement in the situation. One month later my daughter opened up to me (ME) about her situation. She told me that, out of frustration for feeling like I was harping on her too much about her treatment of her sister, she'd told her mother and Karina that "dad and [my sister] can have their happy family, I'm done." She said she'd said it out of anger and that she didn't mean it. We talked about her anxiety and sadness, where it was coming from, what the deal was with her sister -- all of the things that could have been uncovered when I'd one month earlier said that Audrey was clearly struggling and we needed help. So once again, I contacted Karina. There is a crisis. You have absolutely no idea. This ship of "everything is fine" needs to be turned immediately. Karina's response? "What are you going to do about it?" At this point you might be thinking, yeah, that is not acceptable. But I haven't even gotten to the awful part yet. Because what had happened one month prior after I'd initially reached out was that Karina confronted my daughter about her behavior, and my daughter got defensive and lied, blaming me and her sister for the cruel way she was treating her sister. Then instead of ever raising a single concern with me about it, or ever checking back in again, Karina told my ex that I was emotionally abusing my daughter! Who also proceeded to never tell me about it. When Audrey went back to being a kind sister again, after her emotional difficulties were addressed months later, after I'd raised them and was ignored, after my daughter confided the actual truth about everything to me (she was being bullied at school!), Karina never went back to my ex to admit that her fantastically incorrect conclusion based on my daughter's obvious lies was not remotely correct. And I of course was still none the wiser. So what did this mean? Well, because we were in the middle of modifying the visitation schedule, this destroyed my relationship with my ex. It put my daughter actively in the middle, as my ex was telling my daughter that she shouldn't spend more time here because Karina says so, which was adding to my daughter's anxiety. Instead, Karina insisted that "for the well being of your daughter" me and my ex needed parenting therapy (we had been divorced for ten years) but refused to tell us why. The reason was the situation created 100% by Karina. Beyond unprofessional. This all came out after my ex FINALLY decided to talk about any of this with me. We promptly fired Karina. The damage she did was immeasurable. She had months to come clean with me and my ex. Instead she shoved a "safe harbor" agreement in our faces and refused to talk to us together, after loads of talking to us apart. Laziness, lack of accountability, the unwillingness to trust a parent in crisis begging for help with their amazing kid, and the blinding ethical lapses of weaponizing your child's social struggles, pitting parents against one another without their knowledge. If that's what you're looking for then Karina is for you. "