Mission Statement

Monica Buttafava is a licensed mental health counselor and has been working in the field of mental health since 1996.  She has particular expertise in working with children, adolescent and their families and is interested in the areas of parenting support, and child development.

Monica can provide in depth therapeutic work as well as clinical and developmental consultations.

Before starting her private practice she was trained in a child and adolescent Mental Health Center in Italy and subsequently worked as a professor of Developmental Psychology at a private university in Costa Rica. Monica then worked several years as a psychotherapist for a non-profit agency in the Chicago suburbs serving children and their families. She also collaborated with the Barr-Harris Children’s Grief Center of the  Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, aimed to helping children who have lost a parent or significant loved one through death, divorce, or abandonment 

After earning a master degree in Clinical Psychology in Italy, Monica pursued a four-year, post-master's Advanced Training Program in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.