About us

CENTER PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA is a centre created after years of experience in the clinical psychology field. One of its founders, the clinical psychologist Manuel Oliva Real, with over twenty-seven years in the profession, created this project with the idea of covering a wide spectrum of demands in the field of clinical psychology.

With a qualified professional team in continuous training, CENTER PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA, wants to bring you all the possible coverage a specialized centre can offer.

THE TEAM

 The team of CENTER PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA is formed by psychologists, speech therapists, psychiatrists and, in an interdisciplinary way, collaborates with neurologists, internists and paediatricians.

From our centre we understand the best way to assist the person is in a multidisciplinary manner.

OUR PHILOSOPHY

From CENTER PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA we provide the patients with the support from an integral perspective, taking into account the person, their values and their sociocultural context. Therefore, we want to give patients the best personalized service from a warm, human and professional environment.

METODHOLOGY

In CENTER PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA we work from a cognitive-behavioural perspective and from third generation therapies, since, from our centre we want to offer our patients those most innovative therapies with greater scientific support.

Therefore, from CENTER PSICOLOGÍA CLÍNICA we want to offer a therapeutic process adapted to each of our patients, which entails the following:

  • Welcome to our centre.

  • Evaluation and establishment of a clinical diagnosis (cognitive, behavioural and emotional) through standardized tests.

  • Sharing the objectives to be achieved.

  • Psychotherapeutic treatment.

  • Family orientation.

  • Follow-up on the objectives set.

  • Completion of the therapeutic procedure.

Specialized Units

OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is encompassed within obsessive-compulsive disorders and related disorders in the DSM-5. Patients often have repeated and distressing thoughts called obsessions. We could define obsessions as repetitive and persistent thoughts, images or impulses associated with significant anxiety and which are experienced as invasive, illogical and stressful. In order to try to control these obsessions, people with OCD feel an imperative need to perform rituals or behaviours, called compulsions, such as checks, handwashing and mental acts (eg, counting, praying).

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can become highly disabling for the person and for the people closest to them.

In this unit, we carry out an emotional, cognitive and behavioural assessment through a clinical interview with the patient and with a close relative, applying self-reported and standardized questionnaires.

Subsequently we proceed to interdisciplinary intervention with the most innovative therapies and with a greater scientific endorsement. From this specialized unit we address all the symptoms of OCD through third generation and cognitive-behavioural therapies.

NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

First, we perform a neurocognitive evaluation that consists of a procedure in which the different domains are studied, such as: attention, memory, language, praxis, gnosis and executive functions as well as an emotional and behavioural assessment. With this aim, we use different standardized instruments, including a clinical interview, behavioural observation, different cognitive tests and questionnaires to obtain information from both the patient and a reliable relative or informant.

The neuropsychological intervention is aimed at optimizing the patient’s general cognitive performance and quality of life, as well as that of his closest relatives.

Neuropsychological assessments are performed on adults and children, developing this service in the face of a totally personalized evaluation and intervention approach and, therefore, working individually with each person.

This service is focused on the following populations:

-. Neuropsychological evaluation and intervention in child-youth patients with the following pathologies:

  • Attention-Deficit Disorder with or without Hyperactivity (ADHD)

  • Difficulty in acquiring reading and writing skills (Dyslexia or Reading and Writing Disorders)

  • Difficulty acquiring the principles of calculus (Discalculia) and other disorders related to motor learning.

  • Neurodeveloped disorders (Autism spectrum disorders, unspecified development disorder).

  • Problems in motor skills, in spatial and visual relationships, as well as difficulties in adapting to new situations and achieving an adequate social interaction of the child (Nonverbal learning disorder)

  • Tourette síndrome.

  • Epilepsy

  • Cognitive disorders in diseases of the central nervous system (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spina bifida, cerebral palsy).

-.Neuropsychological evaluation and intervention in adult patients:

  • Major neurocognitive disorder due to Alzheimer’s disease

  • Major frontotemporal neurocognitive disorder.

  • Major neurocognitive disorder with Lewy body.

  • Major neurocognitive disorder due to Parkinson’s disease.

  • Subjective complaints of memory loss.

  • Mild cognitive impairment

  • Attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity (ADHD) in adult.

  • Epilepsy

  • Cognitive impairment associated with psychiatric disorders such as: Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Eating Behaviour Disorder.

  • Supervening brain damage: head injuries, strokes, encephalitis, brain tumours, etc.

Within this service, we have a more specialized serviced in ADHC, Tourette Syndrom, dementias and brain damage. The intervention in those disorders must be pesonalized and designed by a neuropsychologist in order to make an effective treatment with improvements in the short, medium and long term.

EATING DISORDERS

Eating Disorders (ED) are characterized by pathological behaviour in food intake and an obsession with weight control. The origin in these disorders is multifactorial, that is, biological, psychological, familiar and sociocultural causes are involved in their origin. First, we evaluate and diagnose, using different tools in order to complete the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-5 manual. Within these tools there is a clinical interview, selfreported questionnaires, the body mass index (BMI), as well as different questionnaires, standardized to evaluate the patient’s eating behaviour. Also, we take into account an emotional assessment. On the other hand, information will be obtained from the closest relatives or a reliable informant.

Once the evaluation and diagnosis have been carried out, an interdisciplinary treatment (psychofarmachological, psychological and family therapy) is carried out.

The main objective of the intervention is to recover a state of integral health that allows reducing or eliminating the medical and psychosocial risks of eating disorders, and for this, those cognitive, behavioural and family aspects that elicit and (or maintain) inappropriate or uhealthy habits are worked on.

The different Eating Disorders can be classified in the following:

  • Anorexia Nervosa: it is a disorder of eating behaviour that is characterized by a refusal to maintain a certain weight depending on the gender and age of the patient and is manifested, mainly, by the restriction in food intake.

  • Bulimia Nervosa: it is a disorder of eating behaviour that is characterized by binge-eating episodes, in which a large amount of food in ingested in a short time.
    Subsequently, these people usually compensate for their effects with selfinduced vomiting and/or other manoeuvers of purging or increasing physical activity.

  • Binge-eating Disorder: it is characterized by the presence of binge eating on a recurring basis but the person does not perform compensatory behaviours. Also, these people usually have associated depressive symptoms.

FAMILY COUNSELLING

 

We can define the family as the first socializing context par excellence, the first natural environment where the members that form it evolve and develop at an emotional, physical, intellectual and social level, according to experienced and internalized models. However, this does not turn out to be a simple task and this poses many new challenges.

Therefore, from this unit we offer families an advisory tool for:

  • Divorces and separations.

  • Reports for trials.

  • Family mediation

  • Family crisis.

  • Psychoeducation.

  • Training for parents.

PSICHO-ONCOLOGY

According to the definition provided by the WHO (2017), cancer is a “generic term that designates a broad group of diseases that can affect any part of the organism, characterized by its fast extension through the patient’s organism”. At the time of cancer diagnosis, the patient goes through innumerable new situations, full of uncertainty, which pose a high level of stress due to the associated worries, fears and pain.

The cancer treatment process is complex and is usually associated with complications that influence the physical, psychological and social level in both the families and patients themselves.

From this unit, a series of basic psychological processes that favour the adaptation of cancer patients and family members are postulated:

  • Emotional expression: in this way, the change from coping emotionally is facilitated.

  • Social support.

  • Facing the fact of death.

  • Organizing priorities.

CHRONIC FATIGUE-FBROMIALGIA-CHRONIC PAIN- MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVE SYNDROME 

Fibromyalgia is a serious and long-lasting disease that affects many body systems. It is a pathology that increasingly and seriously deteriorates the quality of the patients’ lives. This disease has associated fatigue, generalized pain, as well as depressive symptoms, anxiety and sleep disorders. In addition, many of these patients report having some cognitive disorders such as forgetfulness, concentration difficulties or mental slowness.

For its part, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a long-term illness that affects may body systems and causes fatigue that does not disappear after rest and persists for a long time.

The Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome is also known as idiopathic environmental intolerance and is chronic syndrome of unknown aetiology and pathogeny, whereby the patient experiences a wide variety of recurrent symptoms, involving several organs and systems, related to the exposure to various substance, in very low doses, such as chemicals.

Chronic pain is one of the medical problems that generates a larger number of consultations and more functional limitation in people who suffer from it. Therefore, chronic pain is also associated with significant emotional suffering, for the person suffering from it and for those close to them.

Usually, fibromyalgia, as well as chronic fatigue, multiple chemical sensivity syndrome and chronic pain occur comorbidly in patients.

In our clinical experience the therapeutic strategies that are going to be a personalized evaluation of the cognitive, emotional and behavioural profile of the patient. Likewise, the therapeutic intervention is based on the following:

  • Establishing a therapeutic plan.

  • Psychoeducational phase.

  • Phase of promoting active acceptance.

  • Exercise to work with the mind-body connection.

  • Helping to build the meaning of pain.

  • Encouragement to do physical exercise.

  • Working with families.