About Allison
Dr. Allison Bethea is a Maryland psychologist with two decades of clinical experience. She holds an MD and has worked in mental health since the early 1990s.
Her practice centers on helping people manage stress, anxiety, mood concerns, and life changes. She uses straightforward, skills-based methods. Sessions often focus on identifying problems, trying practical strategies, and tracking small steps forward.
Mindfulness practices and cognitive techniques are common tools in her work.
How Allison works
Dr. Bethea pays attention to how physical health and brain function affect mental well-being. She draws on that understanding when selecting strategies for anxiety, depression, ADHD, and stress-related problems.
This helps tailor approaches to each person’s situation. She has particular experience with LGBT concerns, parenting stress, grief, trauma and abuse, and sleep difficulties. Additional focus areas include chronic illness and pain, neurodevelopmental differences such as autism and Asperger syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive concerns.
She also addresses issues like anger, self-esteem, and coping with major life transitions. The style in sessions tends to be collaborative and practical. People can expect to set goals together, try exercises between meetings, and review what works.
Dr. Bethea emphasizes building on strengths and learning manageable skills to improve day-to-day functioning.
Allison lists 5 ways of working on the entry:
What Allison works with
The areas below are the ones Allison selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
- Stress, Anxiety
- LGBT
- Parenting issues
Also listed
- ADHD
- Anger management
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Coping with life changes
- Depression
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Gender dysphoria
- Grief
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Multicultural concerns
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Trauma and abuse
- Traumatic brain injury
- Visually impaired
Training and background
| Register | MD |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 20 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Maryland |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
How these approaches translate to online care
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses on the link between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In online sessions that means identifying unhelpful thought patterns, testing them with real-life experiments, and practicing new skills between meetings to reduce anxiety or depression.Mindfulness Therapy emphasizes present-moment awareness and simple exercises to reduce stress. In remote work this often looks like guided breathing, short attention practices during a video call, and brief mindfulness exercises to use when feeling overwhelmed.
Finding the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will discuss goals, preferences, and needs, and then suggest which methods to try first. If something isn’t helpful, strategies are adjusted together until a good fit is found.
Online therapy offers practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and visual cues, phone sessions work when bandwidth is limited, and live chat or text messaging supports quick check-ins or brief skill practice. These options make it easier to fit therapy into a busy life and to continue work between sessions.
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A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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