911 Wellness offers Northern Illinois’s First Responder community the best mental health clinicians in the business. Our team has vast experience and endless compassion, helping individuals, couples, groups, and teams find answers to mental health challenges.
Dr. Franklin is a psychologist resident who has been dedicated to first responders for both of her careers. As a psychologist resident, Dr. Franklin has focused on trauma-informed care for depression, anxiety, moral injury, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Her approach to therapy is integrative. She uses aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, psychodynamic therapy, dialectal behavioral therapy, and mindfulness to help clients improve their lives and relationships. She is certified in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, an evidence-based treatment for symptoms that result from trauma and has been trained in Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy.
For the 21 years prior to starting her doctoral studies at Rutgers, Dr. Franklin was a lawyer in the City of Chicago Department of Law’s Federal Civil Rights Division (FCRL). She represented the City and Chicago Police Officers in intentional misconduct lawsuits. From 2010 to 2018, Dr. Franklin led FRCL and reviewed every intentional misconduct lawsuit filed against Chicago Police Officers. It was that experience that led her to explore the ways poor officer mental health impacts injuries on duty, disability claims, and negative conduct that results in lawsuits and citizen complaints.
At 911 Wellness Group, Dr. Franklin leads a team of mental health professionals who are dedicating their careers to the first responder and military communities. She is combining her legal risk management experience with her experience in psychology to offer a service that is not offered elsewhere – helping first responder agencies pay for services by applying for and using grants. As part of her dissertation, a survey of Chicago Police Officers related to traumatic experiences and the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder, Dr. Franklin created a survey instrument that first responder agencies could use to collect data that could be used to obtain federal and state grants. She would use that expertise to help agencies better understand the challenges their members face, craft services that respond to those needs, and pay for those services without negatively impacting their budgets.
Dr. Franklin earned her doctorate at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has worked with adults, including veterans and first responders, at the Chicago Police Department’s Employee Assistance Program, the World Trade Center Health Program in New Jersey, the Anxiety Disorders Clinic at Rutgers, the VA Western New York Health Care in Buffalo, NY, and the First Responders Wellness Center. Prior to starting her doctorate, she earned her master’s in counseling, specializing in forensic psychology at Adler University. She earned her JD at the University of Chicago Law School.
Danielle Mains holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, specializing in crisis and trauma from Walden University. She believes in individuals’ inherent resiliency and capacity for growth and healing.
Danielle prides herself in empowering clients to overcome obstacles, cultivate self-awareness, and live fulfilling lives aligned with their own values. As a spouse of an Army veteran and medically retired firefighter/paramedic, she brings a unique perspective to her counseling practice, which has been shaped by witnessing the challenges faced by first responders, veterans, and their families, both on the job and at home. These experiences have fueled her passion for mental health advocacy and led her to pursue a career in counseling.
Danielle provides individual counseling through a trauma-focused CBT lens, emphasizing the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors while using EMDR to help clients harness their brains’ natural healing powers to heal trauma. She works collaboratively with clients who struggle with trauma, anxiety, depression, compassion fatigue, burnout, codependency, ADHD, and PTSD.
Dr. Heidi Ramirez is currently a psychologist resident. She graduated with a doctorate of psychology (Psy.D.) in clinical forensic psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles Campus. Her clinical experience consists of working with underserved populations, specifically with incarcerated adolescents and adult males. She began her training with children and adolescents who were assigned to a trauma-informed charter school in Los Angeles, CA and completed her pre-doctoral internship at a forensic psychological private practice in Tempe, AZ. During her pre-doctoral internship, she provided competency evaluations, competency restoration programming, forensic, psychological, and neuropsychological assessments. In addition, she provided individual psychotherapy, and dialectical behavioral group therapy.
She then continued her training and completed her post-doctoral residency at Arizona Department of Corrections as the unit psychologist for the crisis/mental health watch unit conducting suicide risk assessments, hormone replacement therapy evaluations, and psychological autopsies. She took a special interest in working with correction officers, which led to helping prepare incoming cadets working with the incarcerated population and she became one of the mental health instructors at the Arizona Correctional Officer Training Academy. She furthered her career and began working with college students at the University of Arizona’s Counseling and Psych Services (CAPS) center – ADHD Clinic providing testing, individual, and group therapy. She mainly focused on those with suspected attention issues and provided comprehensive psychological evaluations to determine diagnosis and treatment recommendations.
Throughout Dr. Ramirez’s training, she has gained valuable experience in working with various populations, as this has shaped her therapeutic approach. Dr. Ramirez utilizes a trauma-informed approach that is strength-based to help those rebuild a sense of control and empowerment. Her therapeutic training includes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and Internal Family Systems (IFS).
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