About Hawthorn Counseling Group

First of all, thank you for making it this far on my website! I’ll share a bit more information here regarding my professional background.

While I completed my doctoral training in 1988 and was licensed the following year, my start as a practitioner in the field of mental health actually began in 1979. I held a variety of positions while in graduate school: I was a staff counselor and helped manage inpatient psychiatric programs, practiced as a psychometrician, provided counseling in medically-supervised weight loss programs, worked in a community mental health center and was an instructor in group psychotherapy at a residential treatment facility. My doctoral training was designed to equip me with the skills necessary for general clinical practice and I also developed a subspecialty focus upon child/adolescent development and family systems. I trained in diagnostics in the child psychiatry department at the University of Chicago, followed by a year at the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing upon the practice of psychotherapy. My predoctoral clinical psychology internship was at the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute, which was then a major training facility operated by the State of Illinois, located in Chicago’s west side medical complex. The field of clinical psychology has been influenced by a number of Chicago-based academicians, writers and theorists with humanistic, psychodynamic and family systems perspectives. Also, significant research concerning the efficacy of psychotherapy was conducted in Chicago. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to train in Chicago with psychologists who were prominent contributors to these areas of practice and research. My doctoral dissertation was based upon independent research concerning post-traumatic stress and an empirically validated model of short-term psychotherapy. I completed my Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) degree at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology in 1988 and was licensed the following year.

Following completion of graduate school, I practiced in hospital settings as a staff psychologist, eventually spending sixteen years at St. Therese Medical Center/Vista Health in Waukegan, IL, where I served as director of the medical center’s behavioral medicine department. I later also served as director of the hospital’s physical rehabilitation department as well as the hospice program. It was a diverse portfolio of responsibilities.

My sixteen years as chief clinician and administrator of behavioral medicine, physical rehabilitation and hospice were very formative. We developed a wide range of behavioral health programs and services. These included inpatient psychiatric programs, PHP/IOP programs, consultation-liaison services, community outreach initiatives and professional training programs in which we trained clinical psychology graduate students.

I developed Hawthorn Counseling Group while I held management positions at the medical center and eventually decided to return to my roots to focus upon the practice of clinical psychology. I left the world of hospital administration in 2005 for full time private practice with a focus upon psychotherapy with adolescents, adults and older adults, along with a number of specialized services. Since 2005, in addition to maintaining my practice, I have been active in Lake County in a number of initiatives related to suicide prevention, violence prevention and I often provide consultation to schools and school districts on a variety of mental health and training matters.

--John Jochem, Psy.D.