Professional Experience in Champaign-Urbana

• Robert Silverman, Counseling. Behavioral and mental health counseling for adults, teens, families, groups.
• Champaign County Operation Snowball: Executive Director, 2003-08; leadership skills for high school age teens.
• The Pavilion, psychiatric hospital: On call PRN, 2000-04; adults, teens, psychiatry, chemical dependency.
• Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation: Executive Director, 1995-98; a non-political fund raising group which supports social service and educational programs.
• Champaign County Mental Health Board: Youth Services Coordinator, 1989-92.
• Mental Health Center of Champaign County: Child/Adolescent Program.
• Children's Home and Aid Society
• Prairie Center Health Systems

An Illinois Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor (L.C.P.C.), and a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor (C.R.C.), he has worked over twenty-five years in the areas of mental health, substance abuse, education and leadership skills, covering a range of age populations, including teens, adults and seniors.

Robert Silverman completed an internship with psychiatrist, Raymond Robertson, M.D., in Westmont, Illinois, 1979-1980. Dr. Robertson worked with adults and families at the Riveredge psychiatric hospital and in his private practice. Besides being the Clinical Director of the hospital's intensive adolescent unit, he was also a Gestalt therapist with a private practice assisting clients develop what psychologist Abraham Maslow termed, Self-Actualization. Dr. Robertson had worked with Frederick (Fritz) Perls and utilized the self-awareness methods of Gestalt therapy not only with individual clients, but especially in his weekly therapy groups and the regularly held, therapeutic weekends. After completing this internship, Robert Silverman received further training in the self-awareness methods of Gestalt Therapy and today uses these, along with cognitive-behavioral therapeutic methods, in his own counseling practice.

Robert Silverman earned a Master of Fine Art's degree (M.F.A.) in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 1987, where he taught writing, 1985-87. He was one of thirteen artists in the Arad Arts Project, Israel, 1992-93. He trained to be an interviewer for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, 1995, a nonprofit organization established in 1994 to collect and preserve the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. He interviewed survivors in Central and Southern Illinois and in Indiana and currently is a speaker for the Holocaust Education committee of the Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation.

Many forms of self-expression are therapeutic. With professional degrees in counseling, design and creative writing, Robert Silverman integrates Communication Skill Building and Creative Self-Expression into his counseling practice.