Joanne Jonna

My journey into mental health therapy started when I was in high school. I moved from one town to another, and it was all brand new. I was definitely feeling maybe slightly anxious, scared, nervous, all the things when you move to a new school as just a freshman in high school. I really loved my high school counselor, Ms. McKelvey. She was really able to make me feel comfortable, introduce me to other girls that I could potentially be friends with, and she put me in all the right classes. She really helped me make that transition and made me feel comfortable. When I graduated high school, I wanted to be a school teacher, which I did accomplish. But after that, it was difficult in Michigan at that time to even get a job in teaching. A couple thousand people would apply per interview. I thought, you know what, if this is so hard, why don't I just go get a master's? I thought about Ms. McKelvey and how nice it would be to help out other high school students or just students in general. So I decided to go down that path, getting my master's in counseling with both community and school tracks. When my kids went back to school, I had to reinvent myself. I thought, you know, I spent a decade in education, why not try private practice? I'm in downtown Ann Arbor, and I started off working for a group practice, seeing a lot of university students, people from the greater Ann Arbor area. I was just seeing adults at the time, but I did 2 years under supervision. Then I went off on my own about a year ago, and I'm specializing in seeing adults, college students, people from the university, the hospital, community members, but I also added children and teens to my caseload as my niche. That's been very busy and definitely a need for that. I see about 30 clients a week. I have my Wildflower Mental Health Therapy practice, and I have a half playroom set up for play therapy. I do DBT, a lot of mindfulness, dialectical behavioral therapy, CBT, EMDR for trauma.