Iris Waichler MSW, LCSW

Iris Waichler has been a medical social worker and patient advocate for over 40 years. Her work has focused on patients with catastrophic illnesses and providing psychological assessments, discharge planning, and counseling for patients and family members in emergency rooms. Ms. Waichler has done extensive individual, family, and group counseling, offering therapy and support to patients and their family members. Her current areas of focus are infertility, aging, caregiving, grief and loss, and death and dying.

Ms. Waichler is currently doing workshops, podcasts, and webinars focusing on caregiving, aging, grief and loss, and infertility. She works with a variety of agencies, podcasters, and companies wanting to educate and support individuals as they work on these topics. She uses individual counseling, family systems theory, and psychoeducational counseling to support, train, and educate the people. Ms. Waichler’s focus is to help them understand and cope with their identified problems and issues. She views herself as a patient and family advocate. She believes counseling and education can empower people. She finds that when people are battling these issues, understanding they are not alone in their feelings and learning coping techniques and dynamics can help them begin to heal, have clarity, express their emotions, and utilize effective coping strategies.

Ms. Waichler was a member of a multidisciplinary treatment team working with patients in a physical medicine and rehabilitation unit. She was also the director of medical social work at a large hospital in the Chicagoland area. She was a social worker on a psychiatric unit and also at a hospital specializing in geriatrics. Ms. Waichler supervised social work students from all the social work schools in the Chicagoland area. She has done multiple workshops and webinars on infertility. She has also done individual and group counseling with people battling infertility.

Professional Affiliations:

National Association of Social Workers

Education:

Bachelors of Arts from the University of Iowa
Masters in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Iowa

Why I Write for Choosing Therapy:

I write for Choosing Therapy because I like the fact that all articles are written by licensed, experienced clinicians with expertise in designated areas. I also appreciate that all of their articles include at least five resources from respected journals, experts, or academic institutions.