“I believe that the most important aspects of any professional intervention is: 1) to be comfortable with your counselor or professional, and 2) whether your counselor believes in your ability to change. I believe that each person is fully capable of making their own best decisions and - sometimes with a bit of help – is competent to discover or uncover what healthier living means for them. Working with people, in any format, is a privilege.  It also helps me to be a better professional and consultant.”

Dee-Dee Stout holds a Special Major Master’s degree in Health Counseling for Special Populations from San Francisco State University. She is also a California Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor level II (CADC-II) with international reciprocity.  She is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT; see www.motivationalinterview.org). Dee-Dee has done extensive training in the field of substance abuse and behavior change with such experts as Drs. William Miller & Stephen Rollnick (Motivational Interviewing), Drs. Scott D. Miller & Barry Duncan (The Heroic Client: Becoming Client-Centered and Outcome-Oriented; The Heart and Soul of Change), Jane Peller, LCSW & John Walter, LCSW (Recreating Brief Therapy); (Dr, Patt Denning and Jeannie Little, LCSW (Harm Reduction Psychotherapy), among others.

Dee-Dee is a faculty member at City College of San Francisco and former adjunct faculty at San Francisco State University; she has developed curriculum for the Northern California Training Academy at UC Davis as well as in other settings. Dee-Dee spent the past year as the Clinical Program Manager for Project Pride in Oakland, CA, a California Community Prisoner Mother Program (CPMP) that includes community-based pregnant and perinatal women.  There, she and staff worked to break new ground, bringing trauma-informed, gender-responsive treatment to these moms and dismantling the often re-traumatizing traditional prison therapeutic community (TC) model of substance abuse treatment.  Dee-Dee has also worked in other treatment settings:  other therapeutic communities (TC), social model, and medical-model settings. Her past accomplishments in treatment include developing exercise programs; forming a relapse prevention treatment program for a large HMO; starting family programs for residential social-model treatment programs in the Bay Area, and now, bringing trauma-informed treatment to female prisoners and other moms.

Dee-Dee has conducted some 450 presentations, talks, and trainings to date on such subjects as: Anger Management, Families of Substance Users and Abusers, Motivational Interviewing, the Stages of Change, Human Sexuality, Nutrition, and more. She is a frequent Bay Area speaker and trainer and has presented at numerous conferences including the International EAP Conference in Vancouver, several Harm Reduction Conferences, the Annual Federal Bureau of Prisons Conference, CAADAC Conferences, and the 2009 International Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma conference. She has spoken to groups as diverse as EAGALA (equine-assisted therapy) to Cornell University (3-day MI training) to the recent Annual Voice Conference (through UCSF Department of Otolaryngology) in San Francisco.  She was even filmed by the Emmy-award winning Showtime series “Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!” and is often interviewed for comments for radio and in press on treatment.  She also contributed to the book “Over the Influence” by Patt Denning, Jeannie Little, and Alina Glickman (Guilford Publishing) as well as David Rosengren’s new book, “Building Motivational Interviewing Skills” (2009, Guilford Publications).
Dee-Dee has spent time volunteering with the Department of Public Health/Community Behavioral Health Services (CBHS) and the Volunteer Legal Services Program (VLSP) here in San Francisco as well as with various organizations promoting human rights, including queer rights, women’s health, and drug user’s rights. Previously, she has worked in such areas as marketing & advertising, radio, and taught Suzuki piano for a decade.
Dee-Dee’s new book, Coming to Harm Reduction Kicking and Screaming:  Looking for Harm Reduction in a 12-Step World,” is available through the publisher (www.AuthorHouse.com) as well as major book retailers.

Updated Sept 2009