By Andrew Shaughnessy, August 4, 2020, Portland Tribune.
Empowered by a federal grant, George Fox University doctor of psychology trains students to provide care for vulnerable.
(Editor's note: The name and some identifying information about this patient have been changed).
On the day that Cara Bell walked through the doors of the Providence Medical Group building in Newberg, she was at the end of her rope.
Plagued by a history of trauma, abuse and meth, Bell was homeless, in and out of jail and addicted to heroin. For a long while, she simply accepted this as her reality â just the cards that life had dealt her.
But when Bell discovered she was pregnant, it turned her world upside-down.
"She came in immediately," said Dr. Jeri Turgesen, a primary care psychologist at Providence Newberg and a graduate of George Fox University's doctor of clinical psychology program. "She had so much guilt and shame around the fact that she was using heroin. That was a line she told herself that she would never cross. And the fact that she was now pregnant and harming another life was something that she really struggled with."
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