SARAH CASSIDY, PHD
Founder and Director, New England Centre for OCD and Anxiety
Sarah Cassidy, Ph.D., is an Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychologist and a chartered member of the Psychological Society of Ireland. She specialises in the assessment and treatment of learning and emotional/behavioural difficulties with clinical populations. She is also the Founder and Director at The Smithsfield Clinic, a private practice in Ireland for children, adolescents and their families using largely ACT and RFT-based treatment methods. She has worked as an educational psychologist within the Irish school system for the last 18 years, conducting assessments and advising parents and schools how to best support children with learning and behavioural challenges. In this context, she has developed classroom- and school-wide interventions for improving educational, behavioural and mental health outcomes. Dr. Cassidy is a Peer-Reviewed ACT trainer and trains psychotherapists and allied professionals in both professional and post-graduate settings throughout Ireland. She received her Ph.D in the field of Relational Frame Theory and its articulation with intellectual development. She was author of the first empirical demonstration of the positive effects of intensive derived relational responding skill interventions on intelligence (Cassidy, Roche & Hayes, 2011), and has co-authored several papers since that have validated and extended this effect. Dr. Cassidy is a very experienced workshop leader and has delivered over 30 workshops worldwide in the domains of ACT, RFT, educational and counselling psychology. She is co-founder of Relational Frame Training Ltd, which developed the online SMART training software. She continues to conduct research in this area in an effort to keep pace with the ever changing needs of modern humans. She is a professional member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science (where she is also the chairperson of the membership committee) and a panel member of the National Educational Psychological Service (SCPA) in Ireland. Finally, her recent book, co-authored with Dr. Lisa Coyne, Tired of Anxiety: A Guide to Living Your Life Anyway, Written Especially for Children, is forthcoming in Fall 2022 from Pavilion Press. To contact Dr. Cassidy directly, email Dr.sarahcassidy@newenglandocd.ie.
LISA W. COYNE, PHD
Co-Founder and Clinical Director, New England Centre for OCD and Anxiety
Lisa W. Coyne, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist who has worked to improve the psychological well-being of children, teens and families for nearly 20 years. After teaching as a tenured professor in the APA-Accredited Clinical Psychology at Suffolk University for 9 years, she is now an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, where she founded the McLean Child and Adolescent OCD Institute (OCDI Jr.) and serves as a Senior Clinical Consultant at McLean Hospital. She is also the founder and CEO of the New England Center for OCD and Anxiety, Boston. She is the current President of the Association for Contextual Behavior Science, and serves on the Pediatric and Clinical Advisory Boards of the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF). She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters on anxiety, OCD, and parenting and is the author of The Joy of Parenting: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide to Effective Parenting in the Early Years, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Clinician's Guide for Supporting Parents, Stuff That's Loud: A Teen's Guide to Unspiraling when OCD Gets Noisy, and Stop Avoiding Stuff: 25 Microskills to Face Your Fears and Do It Anyway. She and Dr. Phoebe Moore are currently writing a book on treating adolescents with OCD and anxiety that is due out in 2021 with Guilford Press. To contact her directly, email dr.lisacoyne@newenglandocd.org.
Psychologist (MA) #9109