Patrick Shanahan, LCSW

Patrick Shanahan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in Missouri with 44 years of experience. He works with adults on relationship struggles, grief, anger, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, addictions, family matters, and parenting concerns. He also addresses issues tied to family of origin, intimacy, career shifts, and compassion fatigue.

He begins from the idea that people tend to self-correct once obstacles are recognized. He pays attention to personal values as a practical guide for choices and change. He has studied comparative religions and cultures to better understand different value systems and life perspectives.

Early in his career he founded and ran an outpatient clinic attached to a runaway and homeless youth shelter. For 18 years there he provided case management, individual therapy, and family work both in the shelter and out in the community. He supervised staff and graduate students and collaborated with a university on research to refine their treatment model.

Later roles included part-time work offering professional Christian therapy in an outpatient group, and 18 years with managed care where he helped members use mental health benefits and provided phone therapy and crisis intervention. His approaches draw on brief family work, problem solving, structural and strategic systems theory, hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioral methods, communication theory, and addiction therapies.

Clients can expect a practical, values-focused process that looks at patterns coming from family life and current relationships. He helps people talk through problems, try new ways of relating, and pick concrete steps to move forward.

How his methods translate to online work