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Empowering Change for Teenagers and Young Adults
Samantha Locke, MA, LMFT, LPC-S, MAC, MBACP (Accred), Founder and Clinical Director of YoungMINDED, brings more than 25 years of clinical experience to her work with teenagers and young adults. Since 1999, she has supported young people across residential treatment, schools, private practice, community mental health, and youth outreach programmes. She also hosted a weekly radio programme focused on adolescence and parenting for four years.
Samantha’s approach is compassionate, collaborative and strengths based. She helps young people feel understood and respected while developing practical skills for meaningful change.
Her expertise includes anxiety, depression, ADHD, family conflict, low self esteem, academic stress, dyslexia, dyspraxia, educational support and reasonable adjustments, disordered eating, identity exploration, trauma recovery, emotional dysregulation, peer and relationship difficulties, grief and major life transitions.
Samantha helps young people strengthen emotional regulation, resilience, confidence, and independence as they navigate adolescence and early adulthood.
Therapy with Samantha is collaborative and goal focused. From the beginning, you will work together to develop practical coping skills that can be used straight away, while also understanding what is happening within your thoughts, feelings, behaviours, and relationships. The aim is to help you feel steadier, more confident, and better able to manage life as it unfolds.
Confidentiality is central to therapy, giving young people a safe and private space to speak openly. Samantha also takes safety seriously and will act when there are significant concerns about harm, in accordance with her professional and safeguarding responsibilities.
Many clients work with Samantha for around 10 to 15 sessions, although therapy is tailored to individual needs. Sessions usually begin weekly, allowing time to build trust, understand what is driving the difficulties and develop practical skills. As clients become steadier and more confident, sessions may be spaced further apart to support independence and allow time to practise those skills in everyday life.
Samantha’s integrative approach draws on evidence based therapies, including CBT, DRA, EMDR, REBT, Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Family Systems Therapy, DBT informed approaches and mindfulness practices.
Through extensive experience supporting teenagers and young adults across residential treatment, schools and private practice, Samantha has developed particular expertise in recognising where trauma, chronic stress or difficult family dynamics may have interrupted emotional development. She helps clients of all ages understand where they have become stuck and develop the regulation, relationship, and life skills they may not have had the opportunity to learn earlier.
Samantha adapts therapy to each client’s developmental stage, cultural background, identity, family relationships, and lived experience. Whether addressing immediate difficulties, exploring longstanding patterns, or supporting personal growth, she helps clients and families create meaningful, lasting change.