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Counseling & Treatment Center

Culturally sensitive mental health services for Asian Pacific Islanders designed to meet the unique needs of this population.

Contact Information

7830 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard,
Suite #100
San Diego, CA 92111 Phone: (619)-229-2999

Hours of operation: MWF: 830am-5:00pm, T/Th: 10am -6:30pm, Saturdays: As needed

Program Manager

Katherin Torres, LMFT

Katherin (Kat) is the program manager at UPAC Counseling and Treatment Center and is proud to be a part of the team and UPAC family. Kat is the daughter of immigrants (is an immigrant herself) and attributes much of her ambition in her career to the influence of her parents’ hard work and humility.

Kat is an LMFT who first joined the mental health field in 2011 and provided ACT level of services to transition age youth (TAY) who had been diagnosed with a Serious Mental Illness (SMI) and were homeless/at risk for homelessness. Since then, Kat has provided therapy across the age span, including children, adults, and older adults from all different backgrounds, and has done so in both English and Spanish. Kat was also previously Lead Clinician at UPAC-Community Wellness Clinic (CWC) in 2019, and then Program Manager at CWC from March 2021 to its sunsetting in October 2021.

Kat is passionate about providing best care to those with SMI and to people of different cultures. Kat is also passionate about providing hope for recovery to anyone in treatment and enjoys investing in staff who will continue to provide the best care to our clients.

What We Do

Counseling and Treatment Center (CTC) provides supportive services in a safe and culturally sensitive environment for individuals who are experiencing emotional distress. Services are culturally and linguistically appropriate in order to meet the unique cultural and traditional needs of each individual.

CTC upholds the principle of psychosocial rehabilitation to assist those recovering from mental illness and co-occurring substance abuse disorders. Services include mental health assessments, individual and group therapy, peer support groups, clinical cases management, psychiatric medication management, employment services and geriatric services via in-home visits.

Counseling is offered in English, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Tagalog, Chinese, Karen, Burmese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian Pacific Islander languages. All staff members are multilingual and multicultural professionals who have extensive experience in the field and are dedicated to the wellbeing of their clients.

Who We Serve

We provide outpatient mental health services to all populations, with a focus on Asian and Pacific Islander adults, who are 18 years of age and older with depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress, co-occurring substance abuse and other related difficulties.

Referrals to CTC can be made by calling (619) 229-2999.

Additional Information

For informational purposes only, a link to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments web page is provided here. The federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires that detailed information about payment and other payments of value worth over ten dollars ($10) from manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologics to physicians and teaching hospitals be made available to the public.

It can be found at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov

Success Story

After being released from the hospital, Ja enrolled in services at the UPAC Counseling and Treatment Center. At this time, his business was in bankruptcy and he was experiencing relationship struggles. These stressors triggered his initial mental health hospitalization. Ja shared with his UPAC therapist that due to his circumstances, he had lost the ability to speak and had trouble accessing true feelings of joy, anger, sadness for over a decade. He wanted to utilize individual therapy services, which he attended weekly and eventually monthly, to help himself feel “human and alive” again. He did not want to re-experience the triggers and symptoms that led to his hospitalization.

While in the program, JA felt understood on a cultural level because of UPAC’s specialization in API populations. He was able to learn from therapy, gained greater awareness of his emotional capacity and could now identify his triggers, which helped him find stability in his life. After a year in our program, he was discharged from services and felt very healed from his experience. He now felt confident in his recovery and ability to thrive independently.

*Names have been altered to protect client privacy.

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