About Melanie
Melanie Bannish is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 25 years of experience. She practices in Missouri and offers help for a wide range of concerns, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, grief, and relationship issues. Melanie works in both English and Spanish and uses several well-known therapy approaches to tailor care to each person.
She spent part of her early career working in South America with children who had medical needs and became involved with indigenous and women’s issues while there.
Background and approach
After returning to the United States she coordinated a bilingual domestic violence program serving Spanish-speaking women. Those roles shaped her interest in trauma, abuse, and caregiver stress. Melanie combines practical skills with attention to personal values and meaning.
She draws on client-centered work to make space for each person’s story, and she uses cognitive and behavioral strategies to address patterns that cause distress. She also blends techniques from dialectical behavior therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing when they fit a client’s needs.
Her style is warm and compassionate, and she aims to collaborate on goals and steps people can use between sessions. Sessions can be scheduled as video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging depending on what the client prefers. To begin, people complete a short matching questionnaire and schedule sessions according to therapist availability.
Melanie accepts clients located in Missouri and does not take international clients.
How Melanie’s approaches translate to online therapy
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and understanding each person's views and values. It helps when someone needs a nonjudgmental space to talk through feelings and decide what matters most. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at thoughts and behaviors that keep problems going and teaches concrete skills to change them. It is useful for anxiety, depression, anger, and many everyday struggles. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, teaches emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and improved communication. It can help people who experience intense emotions or relationship conflict.Choosing the right approach is a team effort. The therapist will talk with the client about goals, preferences, and what has or hasn't helped before. From there they decide together which techniques to try and adjust the plan as needed.
Online sessions offer practical flexibility. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and shared visual cues. Phone sessions are an option when bandwidth is limited or a quieter check-in is needed. Live chat and text-based messaging work well for brief updates, quick skill practice, or when messaging fits better into a busy day. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent and fit it around work, family, and other commitments.
Questions people ask
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What this therapist works with
Most often
- Anger management
- Self esteem
- Depression
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Addictions
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Aging and geriatric issues
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Bipolar disorder
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Codependency
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Dependent personality
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Eating and food-related issues
- Eating disorders
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Fertility issues
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Immigration issues
- Impulsivity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- LGBT
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexuality
- Sleeping disorders
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
- Visually impaired
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Client-Centered Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Existential Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
- Mindfulness Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Narrative Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Solution-Focused Therapy
- Somatic Therapy
- Trauma-Focused Therapy
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- Missouri
- Languages
- English, Spanish
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