About
Giselle Torres Fernandez
“Pittsburgh is a good city for the mental health field,” says Giselle Torres Fernandez, an MSW student who hopes to work with Western Pennsylvania’s Latino population when she completes her degree. She’ll bring her own unique perspective to the work—before moving to the United States, she was a psychotherapist in her native Brazil for eight years.
Torres Fernandez, who back home had earned a five-year degree in psychology and an advanced degree in mental health, was at first frustrated to learn she’d need to take several entry-level courses to obtain her U.S. credentials. But her time at Pitt's School of Social Work has never been boring, she says, thanks to supportive faculty members who gave her the chance to conduct research and publish her work alongside them. “I really like the approach of the master’s program,” Torres Fernandez says. Learning about the American approach to family counseling has been instructive, too: “Practice in Brazil is more focused on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis,” she notes. “Here, it’s more creative and there’s more flexibility—you can use different resources. People here are more concerned with treating families. It’s a more systematic approach, and I identify with the methodology.”