Doing Affirmative Cognitive Behavior Therapy with LGBTQ+ Youth and Their Families

Dr. Jeff Cohen, PsyD (he/him), is an Associate Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry at Columbia University, where he contributes to education, clinical care, and research, focusing particularly on the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. Dr. Cohen teaches Abnormal Behavior and advanced courses in clinical psychology to undergraduates in the Department of Psychology at Columbia and instructs in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for psychiatry residents in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Cohen specializes in treating OCD and anxiety, as well as providing gender-affirming care, at the Columbus Circle and Westchester locations of Columbia Doctors Psychiatry. 

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.