Mark Boysen:  

Mark is currently single. His other former schools include Westridge Middle School and was in military school in the middle of high school. He later attended University of Nebraska–Lincoln, San Diego State University for a masters in Marriage Family and Child Counseling, working his way through both. After a short break as the Clinical Coordinator of Dual Diagnosis Unit at a local psych hospital and Relapse Prevention Coordinator at the AIDS Foundation as well, he was convinced to return for his last degree at the Calfornia School of Professional Psychology, this time for his doctoral traning in clinical psychology, with emphasis in cross cultural issues/disenfranchised groups. His doctoral internships included two highly sought placements, the GLBT Center for Social Services (San Diego) as well as the world renowed "St Vincent DePaul Homeless Village" the largest homeless services provider known of at the time. He had a particular passion for the front line psychotherapy he got good at over the years and has worked in the field and taught new counselors, and did all but his dissertation including his comprehensive exams in all areas include psych testing. He continued to work in the field, and feels the clients gave his life meaning and likely taught him as much as he offered them. He was suiddenly struck with Bells Palsy in 2008 and the complications of the underlying disorder his suffered from while working for 5 years finally disabled him, causing him to lose everything he had worked for, and most friends and family to disown or abandon their loyality to him, since a cause was not discovered for five more years. Luckily the clues were there since a physical in 2003 when he worked a prison and had some issue that caused him to get a full workup at Creighton. The disability is an auto-immune one, and it was not discovered until he had several other issues such as COPD, broken ribs, and several seemingly unrelated psychiatric and physical issues. The dots were only recently (2013) connected by a sharp clinician, and will be undergoing endrocrine, pulmonary and other rehabilitation, with the unforeseen, but potentially good recovery chances. A brain tumor that could have been a piece of this puzzle was luckily recently ruled out. He is now unfortunately homeless awaiting disabiltity hearings, and unable to work by a high level of disability, and expects to be one of the few who will receive disability on a first hearing given the distance from his prime he fell, and the total disabiltity/no income that comes with such a disorder constellation. So, he is only half willingly taking a break from this for health issues that suddenly took everything, but hopes to recover completely now that the cause was discovered and treatable. He has learned many things that were unexpected, and regained a new level of faith, and as many new friends and 'family' as abandoned him or disowned him (literally and figuratively) in his hour of greatest need. It likely will provide a new level of understanding of the human condition when he is able to return to his passionate interest in disenfrancised populations--- who always taught him as much as he offered...sometimes more. He is not yet very far beyond initial discovery of the over-arching condition that threatened to have him institutionalized with 25 diagnosis, but he has had to fight all sorts of abuse all his life, and he was a scrapper but almost lost all his resilence. As luck would have it-- or someone above his paygrade-- when he let go-- it was then the overarching disease was recognized by none other than a doctor...Expand for more