EHE News
Therapist dedicated to homeless populations
Denitza Bantchevska
Natasha Slesnick
Denitza Bantchevska wants to spend her career helping marginalized populations, from homeless, drug-addicted mothers to runaway and homeless youth.
She has come a long way to fulfill this dream – all the way from Bulgaria and across 35 years of personal discovery. During her youth, she was told people did not have mental health problems. Life under communism in Eastern Europe was supposed to be ideal.
Yet observation told Bantchevska otherwise, and before she even knew the word, she wanted to be a therapist. At 15, having read the single book by Freud available to her, she knew both the word and her hope for the future.
Today, with the help of a Frank Elam Parker Memorial Scholarship and a Hulda Ungericht Wells Scholarship, Bantchevska is a year away from completing her PhD courses and starting her dissertation in the college's Couple and Family Therapy program, one of only 23 such programs in the U.S. and Canada.
When she learned about Professor Natasha Slesnick, a faculty member and clinical supervisor with the program, she was eager to study with the family psychologist who is known for her research to help homeless youth rejoin society. Bantchevska entered the master's program in human development and family science in 2005.
Multifaceted equals multiple responsibilities
Five years later, Bantchevska has completed the master's degree and logs many hours each week as a clinical therapist in the college's Couple and Family Therapy Clinic, a required activity for PhD students. She also coordinates several aspects of Slesnick's federally funded research project that engages adolescents and their mothers who are receiving substance abuse treatment.
On another of Slesnick's grant projects, Bantchevska oversees a team of undergraduate student research assistants. She coordinates their data management activities and tracks for follow-up the transient families whom the students cannot find.
In short, Bantchevska effectively balances therapy, research, project coordination, classes, teaching and service to the Department of Human Development and Family Science. She says the scholarships help tremendously because, as an international student, she is limited in the amount and type of work she can do in the U.S.
She feels recognized by the scholarships, one of which was awarded by her department for excellence. "It makes me feel what I do must be important," she says. "It gives me pride, knowing that other people care about this work as well."
Most gratifying to Slesnick is the fact that Bantchevska wants to continue working with marginalized populations after graduation.
"Many students don't want to work with this population, or they aren't sure, try it and don't like it," says Slesnick. "Bantchevska wasn't sure, but once she tried it, she loved it. It's what I always hope for when working with students."
Imagination and innovation result in new research findings
Denitza Bantchevska explains her latest research, which determined that homeless adolescents come to the drop-in center because they are lonely or have left home due to family issues. Watch the video.
As a graduate student, Bantchevska has six published articles, two as first author. In an article soon appearing in Social Work Research, she found the majority of homeless adolescents come to the college's drop-in center on Fourth Street east of the Columbus campus because they are lonely or they left home due to parents' problems, not because they need for food, shelter or clothing.
Bantchevska's dissertation reflects innovation as well. She proposes to code family therapy sessions from a clinical trial of substance-abusing runaway adolescents and their primary caretakers.
Her study will be the first to document whether therapists' successful interpretations of clients' situations help them change, and thus foster better family and individual results over a period of two years. It will help us understand how family systems therapy effects change.
"To me, it is important to work with the homeless and addicted because their problems are so severe," says Bantchevska. "These are people who are suffering their whole lives. The drug and alcohol use are just symptoms covering hurt and pain. They are struggling to put together the pieces of their lives and cannot really function well. If I manage to do something that is helpful to them, it means more to me."
Help make a difference with a gift to the college
You can make a difference with your gift to the college.
To assist students like Denitza Bantchevska, choose fund #302808, the College of Education and Human Ecology Student Financial Aid Fund.
To contribute where the need is greatest, choose fund #301705, the College of Education and Human Ecology Dean's Discretionary Fund.
If you have any questions, please contact Tracy Kirby, Senior Director of Development, at (614) 292-5538 or trkirby@ehe.osu.edu.
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