“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”
THICH NHAT HANH
TLDR
An experienced clinical and health psychologist seeing children, adolescents, and adults online. Supports a wide range of concerns and life stages with some focused experience in life transitions, living with chronic disease, grief, medical trauma, anxiety and perfectionism. Click here to email to connect.
ABOUT ME
MEET DR. SARA (she/her/hers)
I am a clinical and health psychologist with over 15 years of experience. Throughout my career I have trained and worked in various settings including hospitals, schools, mental health centres, and private practice. This has allowed me to work with lots of different people in different situations with a variety of reasons that bring them to therapy. It helps me have a flexible and curious approach to my work.
​
I have also been working in a clinical, teaching, and research capacity with the Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Centre at SickKids since 2014. My research has allowed me to work with people with a variety of chronic conditions. I have been an author on over 60 research papers and my research focuses on building resilience in people of all ages with chronic disease. This work as an academic clinician has allowed my curiosity to lead to developing and testing new mindfulness and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy based interventions adapted to chronic disease as well as training peer mentors, graduate students, residents, fellows, and health care professionals.   ​
​
As a human, I view mindfulness as a way of life and allow awareness to lead to values-based living. I believe in coming up with the most workable solutions to problems. Health is about more than the absence of pathology or symptoms but also the
presence of something we care about! To that end, I try my best to savour the good stuff and sometimes eat dessert first. Together with my family, we love to travel, hike, and explore new places....especially if we are off the beaten path.
A list of my scientific peer-reviewed publications can be viewed via ResearchGate or Google Scholar
​
Degrees
2016 - Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Toronto
2012 - Doctoral Diploma, Health Psychology, York University
2012 - PhD, Clinical Developmental Psychology, York University
2007 - MA, Clinical Developmental Psychology, York University
2005 - Hons. BA, Psychology and Health Studies, McMaster University
​