Nearly half a century of serving Bucks County.

In the spring of 1978, a group of people came together to discuss the establishment of a private, nonprofit counseling center that could provide excellent psychotherapeutic services to the many people in the greater Bucks County area whose mental health needs were simply not being met. Many private practitioners’ fees had become prohibitive, and county-supported base service units were dramatically overrun.

Beyond their insight into the need, this group began seriously to consider what a truly excellent counseling center would look like. They became committed to a center that would offer professional services on a sliding scale, ability-to-pay basis — one that would not be limited to a single theoretical model, but would intentionally seek to create an atmosphere of continual dialogue among professionals representing a variety of orientations.

Most importantly, they dedicated themselves to the creation of a counseling center where people would be seen not simply as patients or clients, but as persons of intrinsic value — human beings involved in an experience of growth toward self-actualization.

As a result of this visionary thinking and deep commitment, The Human Growth Center (now The Counseling Center) came into being, completing its first full year of service in 1979. In the nearly half a century since, The Counseling Center has continued to provide a full range of psychotherapeutic, educational, and consultative services to thousands of persons — and has become the standard for what a private nonprofit mental health agency can and appropriately ought to be.