Margaret (Gretchen) Kitsos, LICSW is a social worker at the University of Vermont Medical Center, and a clinical instructor at the Larner College of Medicine. She manages a variety of conditions, including unipolar depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, bipolar depression (I and II), OCD, trauma reactions and adjustment disorders. She also has extensive clinical experience in women’s health issues such as infertility, pregnancy loss and miscarriage, and sexual functioning. She works with individuals and groups, often including family members in stabilization and wellness meetings in support of the patient and the healthy family system.  

Kitsos’s career has spanned over 40 years in both medical and health care settings and private practice. Her experience has included training medical students and residents on the overlap between health issues and mental health functioning; working in intensive care and trauma units; and supervising graduate MSW students and psychiatry residents. She has also authored a chapter in a major OB/GYN text; co-authored a trade paperback on single parenting tween and teen daughters; and co-presented at both international and national conferences on infertility and addictions.  

She chose to enter the field of clinical social work in order to support people who want to move towards wellness and regain themselves after a major health or mental health crisis. Understanding that the act of reaching out for help is a courageous act, she is grateful for the opportunity to help those seeking change and support to turn pain into progress and move from hurt to health. She believes that psycho-education is central to wellness: the more we know about how a disorder works, the more effective we are at derailing its painful symptoms. Returning to wholeness after injury is the best way back to health, and you don’t have to do it alone.   

Her care philosophy is centered on the idea that we each hold our own answers, and her role as a clinician is to support her patients in finding and enacting their own best path. The effectiveness of therapy rests on two primary components—a trust between the therapist and the individual, and the individual's willingness to engage in new behaviors and thoughts and directly challenge patterns. When someone comes to treatment, she encourages willingness, openness to change and self-compassion. When these all come together, change is inevitable and welcomed. She is very honored to be a part of the process of wellness and change. 

Learn more about psychological services at the UVM Medical Center.