Maeve O’Boyle

Maeve is psychological therapist with foundational training in Person-Centred/Humanistic, Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, and Cognitive-Behavioural approaches. She believes in using a mixture of psychotherapeutic approaches including ILF Neurofeedback to help produce successful outcomes for children and young people who have experienced adverse/traumatic life events and other difficulties in their life.

Maeve has worked with children and young people, aged between kindergarten and early adulthood, beginning in 2008 as a Community Music Practitioner, when she worked with children and young people assessed as not ‘fitting’ in with the fixed school system. Maeve is a musician herself and uses music and song writing as a therapeutic tool, having led, and delivered one to one and group-based activity around music, song writing, noise making and conversation about how music makes you feel, to children as young as 4 years old. She created and contributed to 8 years of Community Music and Mental Health Outreach for children and young people after establishing a music school in Glasgow.

Maeve’s experiences have led to her working with children and young people with neurodiverse, behavioural, and complex learning needs where she uses mixed methods including creative exploration, play and different therapeutic approaches to engage with young clients to ensure that they feel heard and able to communicate their internal world. Maeve has a particular interest in working with adolescents, bullying, isolation during adolescence, developmental trauma, youth suicide, and ADHD presentations. She also has an interest in children affected by grief, youth suicide and has previously established and delivered a bereavement group for families affected by suicide.

Maeve is a unique practitioner, and we are so pleased and honoured that she will be working with children and young people in Kedras Clinics in Perth using all her experiences and varying therapeutic approaches, including ILF neurofeedback to create the mechanism for change. She is aware that no one size fits all, and that children and young people express what may be going on for them in ways sometimes that adults don’t always pick up on. As a result, she believes it is important to learn what each child or young person may need by using play, by listening to what a child or young person ‘doesn’t say’, or understanding what they trying to communicate when they’re using creative expression for example through drumming, music, or painting, all of which can help with bilateral stimulation promoting emotional regulation.

Maeve works hard for each child and young person to be offered a unique safe space to explore, to grow and to heal by providing means of communication that don’t necessarily require words, reflecting the developmental and neurological capabilities of a growing mind, body, and brain. She is also aware that some children may still be in a traumatic environment and provides the framework for them to find a way to process this using what feels right for them.

Maeve is also starting a PhD in digital health technology in February 2023 but will continue to work 4 days a week at Kedras Clinics.