Therapy Toronto Free Directory

Article for psychotherapists: Avoiding ethical hazards of new technology

Therapists: to list your practice, please see below. We especially welcome those physiotherapists, massage therapists and shiatsu therapists who do house calls (in-home treatments), and seasoned therapists.
Jan. 12, 2012 We are NOT currently able to accept new listings.

This is a free directory of private sector health care resources in Toronto

We do not use the terms "alternative therapies" or "alternative health care", because they include a wide variety of practices. We only wish to include therapies that have demonstrated benefits. If you are contemplating using an alternative therapy, we would recommend Trick or Treatment by science writer Simon Singh and professor of complementary medicine Edzard Ernst. It examines in detail the research into the effectiveness of alternative therapies, focusing on chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and homeopathy, as well as giving a history of these practices and of scientific medicine, and explaining how medical research works.

This is a genuine free directory, with no ads or paid listings. We hope that it will be useful to both service providers and potential clients, so that they do not have to rely on expensive ways of finding each other. (Therapists paying for yellow pages listings, creating and maintaining their own website with uncertain results, paying hundreds of dollars a year to be on a commercial website or for search engine advertising, or gaining access to potential clients by paying the crippling rents typically charged for managed office space in private clinics and wellness centres, etc.) We hope you find it helpful.

We do not aim to give a complete list of any type of health service provider. We just want to make it easier to find capable, experienced therapists to help with proactive health management, reducing stress, easing pain, improving function, or otherwise benefiting physiological, mental or emotional health.

--Beth and Mike Mares, Toronto

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For health care professionals--very experienced and less experienced

We want to publish quality articles to inform the public about the different therapies and related health topics. For examples, see the excellent articles  by Pam Honeyman in the physiotherapy section. Therapists who do house calls are especially welcome.

Our courtesy policy: We expect therapists who have given an email address in their listings to respond to any appropriate email inquiry within 2 business days, even if they are not  available. For example, I don't do housecalls that far away, I'm not taking clients at present, my rates are $--, or I don't anticipate any evening times opening up for at least a month. We do not have the same expectation about always returning phone calls, as that is more time-consuming, but we appreciate the courtesy of therapists who do. We of course don't expect therapists to continue email correspondence once they have made their unavailability clear. 

How to get listed (providers of in home treatments especially welcome)

Using the models on the page for your type of health care, write your listing the way you want it to appear.  Email it to beth.toronto(at)gmail.com retaining the subject line Toronto therapist to ensure that your email is not mistaken for spam. Please send listings in the body of an email, not an attachment. Please include your official title (e.g., RMT) or professional membership (e.g., Ontario Society of Psychotherapists). If you are an experienced practitioner, please indicate the amount of your experience (in a way that is not misleading). If you are not government-licensed, please include a link to your organization's code of ethics and conditions of membership for us to look at. Include any specialty or special interests you have (e.g., arthritis, insomnia). You can be listed on two pages if appropriate, but the listings should not be identical. Please say which page or pages you would like to be on. (This page is by invitation only.) All submissions are subject to review. We update about once a month, but if you send an article we will try to fast track it.

Directories are approximately in order or seniority, but  we will up-front people who have sent articles so that the articles are easy for our visitors to find, and we may put the contributors of what we consider to be the best articles first. We may also give priority to the more experienced therapists. Please email us to reconfirm your listing between 2 and 3 years after the date shown on it, as we may remove it otherwise to make sure that our visitors are not getting outdated listings. We suggest that you bookmark this site for that purpose. (You go up to Favorites and click on "add to favorites".) You may also want to check back from time to time to see if anything has changed.

Links to websites: We include links to websites on articles and brochures we publish if the requested link is to the professional's own website or in some cases his clinic's website, but not if it is part of a commercial website/directory.  We do not link to professionals' websites directly from the listings pages.

How to submit an article
We encourage you to submit original articles, which will be linked to from your directory listing.  Please note that we do not wish to publish material that states as fact theories that most health scientists would regard as unfounded or speculative, but it is fine to cite scientific research if you give proper references or to write about your own observations (e.g. "In my experience, at the completion of this treatment muscle spasms have disappeared").  We particularly encourage therapists who do house calls (in home treatments) to get listed.

Please do not send copies of material already on the web or material substantially similar, unless you have ascertained and can guarantee that it is inaccessible to the search engines at the other location. (If you are not sure whether the web page you are sending us is too similar, send us a link to the other page so we can check.) Please email the page or pages, stating that it is/ they are not found elsewhere on the web and that if you ever decide to have it/them displayed elsewhere you will give us at least two weeks notice. (We would need to remove the material from this site for your protection as well as ours.)  When writing an article, please give the readers the benefit of your own particular knowledge and experience, not just a rehash of material that can be found on dozens or even thousands of sites. It's also a great idea to answer questions that people often ask you and seem to have had difficulty finding the answers to. We are most interested in articles, but are also publishing brochures for the benefit of potential clients.

You can send your page(s) in the body of an email, or as an attachment in Word, Word Perfect or similar, PDF, or HTML code. If you are using HTML it is a good idea to insert the metatags you want, but we reserve the right to modify them. A photograph or illustration would be welcome. There is a limit of one graphic (file size limit 50K) per page. If you are offering a specialized service, or work in a district where your type of work is not highly competitive, your page will likely be found directly in a search by potential clients, just as if it was your own website.

Your article will be more likely to come up in searches if you use a title that is similar to the search phrase that someone needing this information would be likely to use, and/or if you can get a link to it from a website with a related theme. It will work better if the link is not from the same website that your article links to. If you need clarification on linking to your article, email Beth, beth.toronto(at)gmail.com

We are doing this as a public service, and there is no charge. We hope that you will benefit from the exposure in return for sharing your knowledge. Be prepared for an occasional call from a journalist who is interested in your article and requests an interview. An interview gives you further exposure, but it is absolutely OK to say no if you would rather not.

These offers are time limited. In order to keep the workload manageable we will need to limit new listings when we are too busy.

Tips for writing articles for the web

Create a short title that will quickly convey what the article is about and grab the reader's attention. Web surfers have tons of material in front of them, so they have no time to lose. So get right to the subject. Put yourself in the reader's shoes. Can you tell that you are getting what you are looking for?

Keep it simple. Know what points you want to make, and make them clearly. Use language that is easy to understand and conversational rather than academic. Maintain a clear and organized structure throughout the article, and carefully proofread and edit your article before submitting it.

Give the reader the benefit of your particular knowledge. Your expertise will show. And writing will be easier and more enjoyable. Teach something new or at least teach it in a new way. Don't essentially repeat something that is on thousands of websites. Your knowledge is unique--share it. Include a short bio and your contact information.

--Beth Mares and Mike Mares.

Drumming & meditation workshop for therapists

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Copyright © 2007 Mike Mares, since updated

All rights reserved. The copyright of contributions belongs to the contributors, and all other material is the property of Mike Mares.

The therapist-client relationship

Relationship therapy is an important part of what most psychotherapists and counsellors do, whether with individuals or couples. In all types of therapy, we believe that the quality of the relationship between therapist and client is very important for healing. We promote cognitive therapy and behavioral counselling for depression and anxiety disorders; expressive arts therapy for freeing the imagination and the emotions; secular therapy for people who do not want religious therapy; massage therapy and shiatsu for relaxation and stress management; and physiotherapy and good nutrition for a healthy body.