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Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center: counseling service in Tokyo Japan

English speaking therapist, counselor, and psychologist in Tokyo providing psychological counseling, support, and marital & family psychotherapy at this mental health care counseling service for foreigners in Tokyo Japan (Tel: 03-3716-6624).

Center Overview

The Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center has afforded professional English speaking psychological counselling and psychotherapy for both the international community, as well as psychotherapy in Japanese for the local Japanese community, in Tokyo since 1992. The therapists at the Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center provide individual counseling, marriage and couples counseling; particularly Japanese-Western couples, family counseling, and group psychotherapy in English, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese. The Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center also conducts training for beginning therapists. The Yutenji Temple in the photo above is a 2 minute walk from the Meguro Counseling Center.

Some of the more common problems that the therapists at the Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center have experience treating includes self-confidence problems, relationship/family problems, depression and manic depression, anxiety/panic, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias, substance and alcohol abuse, history of traumatic experiences (PTSD)/child abuse, feelings of unreality, sleep disturbances, psychosomatic (mind/body) disorders, women's issues, gay and lesbian issues, and child and adolescent disturbances. The Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center has considerable experience in the treatment of depression. Corporate training and conflict resolution is also available, please inquire for details. In addition, Phone or Skype counseling is often provided for persons living in the Kansai area (Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto).

Please refer to this link for child and adolescent therapy.

The Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center highly values the professional standards set by the American Psychiatric Association and the therapists maintain Continuing Medical Education Credits in order to provide the highest-quality of care possible. Please also refer to the Meguro Counseling Center Code of Ethics page for further details. Persons who entrust the Center with their counseling needs are treated kindly and professionally, and the work at hand in the care of these persons and their issues is taken extremely seriously.

Counseling Approach

The Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center strives to create a friendly and compassionate atmosphere in its counseling style. An eclectic counseling approach using a balance of the different major types of therapy (cognitive/behavioral, psychodynamic, supportive, group psychotherapy and others) is employed to fit with what each individual requires in order to achieve the goals set in the sessions.

A central theme in therapy is that everyone has certain core issues like feeling inadequate or unloved that one sometimes makes maladaptive defenses against (ie. trying too hard to get noticed by others or getting into unhealthy romantic relations) that can lead to trouble for the individual. Understanding and re-working these defenses and how they lead to trouble, as well as minimizing the effects of one's core issues is a very useful tool in therapy. A detailed description of this approach can be found here: Core Issue-Defense Paradigm, and clinical case examples are on this page. Please refer to the Counseling Tokyo: Depression & Anxiety Specialists page for information on depression and anxiety.

Sometimes an illness like severe Depression or Anxiety may require medication in order to allow the talk therapy to jump-start. The therapists at the Meguro Counseling Center have considerable experience in using psychiatric medications and keep up to date with the many medications used in Western countries that are not yet available in Japan. Your therapist can provide you with information and recommendations regarding psychiatric medication, and the Meguro Counseling Center works together with a number of physicians licensed in Japan who can provide a prescription as appropriate.

Therapist Profiles

Douglas Berger, M.D., Ph.D., Center Director

Douglas Berger, M.D., Ph.D. is the Director of the Tokyo Meguro Counseling Center. Dr. Berger is a graduate of New York Medical College where he also completed a 4-year residency program in psychiatry. Now based in Tokyo, he had served on the Faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry in New York as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. His Japanese qualifications include a Ph.D. in Medical Science from the University of Tokyo School of Medicine received while at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine at Tokyo University. Dr. Berger is fluent in English and Japanese, and conversational in Chinese.