I frequently receive requests for help finding someone who offers neurofeedback training outside the Northern Virginia area where I work. Thanks to a fairly robust network, I’m often able to help.  However, for those times when I don’t know someone in their area, I offer a few tips, and I thought these tips might be worth sharing:

• Choose someone who specializes in neurofeedback. Over the past five years, neurofeedback has become enormously popular among mental health providers.  Psychologists, social workers, and counselors are all jumping on the brain-training bandwagon, which is terrific, up to a point. Many of these individuals attend a one-week workshop and dive right in, offering neurofeedback services with nothing but a tiny amount of training and a lot of enthusiasm. Their mistake is thinking their license to offer psychotherapy confers expertise in neurofeedback; it does not.  When you are looking for a provider, make sure this person is actually doing neurofeedback a significant percentage of their workweek.  It would never be my preference to go to someone who is dabbling a few hours a week in the latest fad.
• Choose someplace that offers consistent trainers. Although I advocate working with a neurofeedback specialist, it’s possible to take that specialization a bit too far.  Across the country, mental health providers are establishing clinics with large numbers of providers under their supervision.  In theory, there is nothing wrong with this, and of course there are many advantages to having colleagues and experts together.  However, to increase profits, some clinics hire less-skilled technicians to run training sessions, and these clinicians often rotate in and out. If you choose to go to a clinic for your training, make sure that you select one which promises that, to the extent possible, the same person will always be supervising your training. You want someone who knows you or your child, and you want someone who has seen something more than a few notes in a file regarding response to training protocols.  Consistency matters.
• Choose a practice in which someone stays in the room with you. Some places hook up their trainees and leave the room. This means that no one is observing what is happening during a session. Most of the time, sessions are uneventful (and honestly can occasionally be boring for the person monitoring training), but sometimes, electrodes come loose or settings need to be adapted midstream or one of several other things may go awry. When things go wrong and no one is there to respond, that entire session has been wasted and may even result in a negative response to the training.

You might be surprised to find that I don’t especially worry about whether someone is new to the field.  If the above conditions are met, then you likely have a provider who is diligent and working with a more experienced practitioner—someone who is supervising and providing the extensive guidance needed to develop true expertise.

As always, feel free to reach out if you need help locating a practitioner outside Northern Virginia. If I can’t find someone directly, I probably have a colleague who can.