Dr Ilana Seager van Dyk (she/her) is a senior lecturer in clinical psychology at the Wellington campus and director of the PRIDE lab. Her research uses experimental and longitudinal methods to understand the social and emotional mechanisms underlying mental health disparities in populations under chronic stress (particularly LGBTQ+ people) during critical developmental transitions. As a clinical scientist, her ultimate goal is to translate these basic research findings into improved evidence-based clinical care for youth and their families.
Although born and raised in Aotearoa, Dr. Seager van Dyk trained in the United States, completing her B.A. in psychology and history of medicine at Yale University followed by two years of research training as a post-baccalaureate research coordinator at the University of Miami. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from The Ohio State University, and completed a 12-month clinical residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Finally, Dr. Seager van Dyk was a postdoctoral associate at the Yale LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative, where she received several small grants (Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, Yale FLAGS) to develop an LGBTQ-affirmative cognitive behavioural group therapy for adolescents.
