About Us

Who We Are

Located in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences building on GW’s Foggy Bottom Campus, the Meltzer Center: Psychological and Community-Based Services provides a wide variety of low-cost mental health services to adults, children, families and couples in the Washington, D.C., area.

All of our services are designed to be culturally sensitive and compassionate for all clients and to reflect high standards of professional ethics and competence. The Meltzer Center does not discriminate against any person on the basis of race, culture, gender, ethnicity, documentation status, sexual orientation, disability, religion, socioeconomic status, veteran status or age. We value the differences and similarities among people, and respect the multiple identities of clients and communities with whom we work.

Our Clinicians

The Meltzer Center is a training clinic for students in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. Doctoral student clinicians are supervised by adjunct and full-time members of the clinical psychology faculty, all of whom are licensed clinical psychologists. The center’s therapists and supervisors represent a range of skills and interests, and whenever possible will be matched to meet a client’s needs.
 

Meltzer Center Leadership and Staff

What Is a Training Clinic?

Our training clinic is run by doctoral students in the clinical psychology program, and the center appoints a student director each year. Our location within a university allows us to provide students with valuable work experience and faculty supervision. Clinic clients benefit from our evidence-based practices, multicultural experience, medical center access and flexible fees and scheduling.

In order to facilitate the training relationship between our clinicians and clinical supervisors, each session is video and audio recorded. This allows our clinicians to work with their licensed supervisors to provide you the best standard of care possible. We treat this confidential information with the utmost security, ensuring that these recordings are kept completely confidential and destroyed after viewing by our clinical staff.

Should you have any questions regarding these procedures, please do not hesitate to call us. Your comfort is our priority.

Resources

Click here to review the Meltzer Center Resource Guide (PDF). 

Ethics and Confidentiality

The Meltzer Center ensures strict confidentiality and operates under the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The Privacy Rule of HIPAA governs the use and disclosure of individually identifiable patient-client health information if such information has not been de-identified (redacted) in accordance with specific, strict provisions of the Privacy Rule. This means that under most circumstances, your information cannot be revealed without your formal written consent.

The George Washington University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences has been accredited by the APA since April 1, 1970. For more information on our accreditation status, you may contact the APA:

APA Committee on Accreditation
750 First St. NE
Washington, DC 20002-4242
202-336-5979

Diversity and Inclusion

Click here to read the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement statement. 

Community Partnerships and Outreach

Our recent community activities and partnerships include:

• School Without Walls
• The Latino Student Fund
• National Depression Screening Day
• Foggy Bottom Neighborhood Block Party
• Asian American Youth Leadership Empowerment and Development

We are available for training and presentations on a variety of topics related to prevention and mental health that can be tailored to your community’s needs at a negotiable fee. For additional information, please contact the Meltzer Center director.

History

Malcolm L. Meltzer served as chair of the GW Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and director of the clinical psychology PhD program in the late 1960s and 70s. His clinical interests were wide-ranging, but his true loves were community mental health and assessment. Today, the Meltzer Center honors his skills as an educator, researcher and clinician.

Aided by public health service funds for graduate training and federal financing for both education and community mental health centers in the 1960s and 70s, Meltzer and the GW clinical faculty placed clinical psychology PhD students throughout the then-neglected Washington, D.C., public school system, community mental health centers, St. Elizabeth's Hospital and at the District of Columbia General Hospital.

Meltzer knew many elementary school principals in the city and worked with them to employ graduate students to develop creative intervention programs for at-risk students. He also helped craft one of the earliest (and still one of the most comprehensive) mental health statutes in the country, the D.C. Mental Health Information Act of 1978.

Under Meltzer’s guidance, the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences launched a generation of research-trained clinical PhDs across the country. The Meltzer Center carries on his mission of education, research and service, with special attention to underserved residents of the Washington, D.C., community.