Personal-Counselor

Check Me Out

OK, let’s be realistic. There are an awful lot of websites out there (over 200 at last count) with people offering online counseling. In some cases, the person offering the counseling is a licensed mental health professional like myself. But many other website owners who claim to be therapists are NOT licensed because they don’t have the many years of education and experience that are required in order to get a license -- or they haven’t passed the national and state licensing exams.

For more information about the importance of professional credentials, check out the excellent consumer guide to online therapy, www.metanoia.org. Some non-credentialed therapists may give excellent advice, but I would not feel comfortable using one of them personally.

So, how do you know if someone really IS who they claim to be? You check them out. In my case, that’s very easy to do. You can easily verify all the important facts about me. First of all, I’m a licensed psychologist and feel free to call the Maryland State Board of Psychology to verify this at (410)764-4787. Second, I got my Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Texas at Austin, and you can call the Registrar's office to verify this at (512)475-7575. You can also dial 411 and find out if there is a Laura S. Diallo, Ph.D. listed in Bethesda, Maryland and they’ll give you my phone number. Compare that to the phone number listed on this site. You can even call the phone number they give you and see if my name is on the answering machine message. If you do this, be sure and say “Hi” instead of just hanging up, OK? Let’s face it – unless you trust me, we’re not going to be able to accomplish much working together, so please feel free to check me out.