Pilar Stein is a Los Angeles-based therapist who has been counseling individuals for more than ten years. She received her B.A. in Communications, as well as her Master’s in Clinical Social Work, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is licensed to practice therapy in the state of California by the Board of Behavioral Sciences (LCS # 21233). Additionally, she has postgraduate clinical training in the areas of trauma, including domestic abuse and sexual assault, and mood disorders.

Pilar has experience in a variety of clinical settings. She began her social work career providing home assessments and case management for frail elders in Santa Monica. She then spent several years in medical social work at the UCLA Medical Centers in Westwood and in Santa Monica, providing crisis intervention to patients and families around issues of death and dying, new diagnoses, chronic illness, and abuse. In doing so, she worked in the emergency room, intensive care units, oncology services, transplant units, and on the obstetric and pediatric services.

While at UCLA / Santa Monica Medical Center, she received highly specialized training and experience in sexual assault at the nationally recognized Rape Treatment Center. In addition to providing direct services to victims and families in the immediate aftermath of assault, she researched, wrote, and presented curricula for law enforcement personnel. She provided outreach and training to first responders and detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Culver City Police Department, Beverly Hills Police Department, Hawthorne Police Department, and Santa Monica Police Department.

Having discovered a passion for working with survivors of abuse, she went on to become the Assistant Director of the Family Violence Project of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. In doing so, she provided individual and group therapy to survivors of domestic abuse, and was responsible for the daily oversight of both the emergency and the long-term, transitional domestic violence shelters operated by Jewish Family Service. While at the Family Violence Project, Pilar also assisted in the development of a teen violence prevention program, and provided clinical training to other therapists on the dynamics of trauma and abuse.

Currently, in addition to her private practice, she works with children and families at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, providing crisis intervention and supportive counseling around issues including premature birth, new diagnoses, chronic illness, death and dying, traumatic injury, and abuse.

Finally, in private practice, Pilar works with individuals around a variety of issues beyond those relating to trauma and abuse. Her broad range of experience has prepared her to effectively assist clients with general relationship concerns, feelings of depression and anxiety, including postpartum depression, and adjustment to early parenting, as well as issues around aging, illness, grief and loss.