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Staff Members

The clinical psychologists and psychotherapists at AICT provide the highest quality cognitive-behavioral treatment for depression, anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, personality disorders, child and adolescent problems and family and marital problems.

Current Staff:

* Denotes Licensure in New York State

Robert L. Leahy (B.A., M.S., Ph.D., Yale University), Director, completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Medical School under the direction of Dr. Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy. Dr. Leahy is the Past-President of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Past-President of the International Association of Cognitive Psychotherapy, Past-President of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, Director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy (NYC), and Clinical Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at Weill-Cornell University Medical School. Dr. Leahy is the Honorary Life-time President, New York City Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Association. He has received the Aaron T. Beck award for outstanding contributions in cognitive therapy.

He was Associate Editor of The Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy (serving as Editor 1998-2003) and is currently Editor of Cognitive Behavior Therapy Book Reviews. Dr. Leahy is now Associate Editor of The International Journal of Cognitive Therapy. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill. Dr. Leahy serves on a number of scientific committees for international conferences on cognitive behavioral therapy and is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop leader at conferences and universities throughout the world. For a listing of professional presentations click here.

He is author and editor of 18 books, including Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (with Holland), Overcoming Resistance in Cognitive Therapy, Bipolar Disorder: A Cognitive Therapy Approach (with Newman, Beck, Reilly-Harrington, & Gyulai), Cognitive Therapy Techniques, Roadblocks in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Psychological Treatments of Bipolar Disorder (ed. with Johnson), Contemporary Cognitive Therapy, The Therapeutic Relationship in the Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapies (ed. with Gilbert) and The Worry Cure which received critical praise from the New York Times and has been selected by Self Magazine as one of the top eight self-help books of all time. His books have been translated into eleven languages and are used throughout the world in training cognitive behavioral therapists. His book The Worry Cure has been translated into nine languages and is a selection of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild and numerous other book clubs. Eleven of his clinical books have been book club selections. His book, Anxiety-Free: Unravel Your Fears before They Unravel You, was published in April 2009. His new book, Beat the Blues Before They Beat You: How to Overcome Depression, is due out in summer, 2010.

He has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, Psychology Today, Washington Post, Redbook, Shape, First for Women, Women's Health, Self Magazine, USA Today Magazine and many other magazines and newspapers worldwide and he has appeared on national and local radio and on television (20/20, Good Morning America, and The Early Show).

For information on media coverage of Dr. Leahy's work please click here. To hear a podcast by Dr. Leahy on worry, click here. To read Dr. Leahy's Anxiety Blog on Psychology Today, click here. He is currently working on several books for clinicians on anxiety, depression, emotional processing, and personality disorders and he is completing a new popular audience book on depression.

Laura Oliff, Ph.D., Associate Director of Institute (Ph.D., New School for Social Research) has over twenty-five years of clinical experience with individuals, couples and families. Her work has focused on the treatment of bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders including OCD, marital conflict, eating disorders, adult ADD and issues such as infertility, health anxiety and phase of life transitions. Her research has focused on women's self-esteem, assertion, rejection-sensitivity and over compliance in relationships. She has conducted several staff-training workshops for the Queens Children’s Psychiatric Hospital and the JCC on the diagnosis and cognitive behavioral treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and parent training. She has also appeared as a panelist on eating disorders and body image issues for Metro-Learning Center TV. Over the years, she has supervised numerous psychology interns and post-doctoral candidates. Most recently, her interest has been in the area of divorce counseling and relationship enhancement. She is a Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.

Dennis D. Tirch PhD, Associate Director of Institute, Director of Clinical Services and Director of the OCD Treatment Program, (PhD, Fairleigh Dickinson University). Throughout his clinical experience, Dr. Tirch has specialized in the treatment of depression, mood disorders, anxiety, trauma, addictions, stress management, and relationship problems. His internship and post-doctoral residency took place at the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, MA., where he served as the Assistant Director of the Bedford Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Center, co-authored articles based on research supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, and developed the “Continual Awareness” mindfulness-meditation based group therapy for trauma survivors. He has co-authored several journal articles and book chapters concerning CBT principles, and has presented research in the USA and Europe. As an educator, Dr. Tirch serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor and Clinical Supervisor at Albert Einstein Medical School, an instructor to psychiatric residents at New York Medical College, and regularly conducts CBT training seminars for healthcare professionals. He has also delivered a week long intensive training in CBT to psychiatrists at the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center in China. Dr. Tirch is currently co-authoring a book on emotion regulation, involving his research interest in the integration of CBT with various meditation techniques. Dr. Tirch is a NY State licensed psychologist, Certified Cognitive Therapist and Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Though primarily based at AICT in Manhattan, Dr. Tirch also operates a cognitive psychotherapy practice in Monroe, New York in Orange County which can be found at http://www.newyorkcognitivetherapy.com/IntegralCBT/Welcome.html

Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco, Ph.D., Director of Eating Disorders and Weight Management Program, Clinician, (B.A., Yale University, Ph.D. Rutgers University) received her B.A. summa cum laude from Yale University and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers University. She completed a pre-doctoral internship at Montefiore Medical Center and continued to work there post-internship as an Attending Psychologist. Dr. Dobrow DiMarco has received extensive training in cognitive behavioral therapy for adults and specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders and eating disorders. She also has experience treating mood disorders and relationship difficulties. She is trained in both Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Motivational Interviewing. Dr. Dobrow DiMarco has authored chapters and articles in the field of eating disorders and presented her work at numerous national conferences. Most recently, Dr. Dobrow DiMarco published her dissertation study, which found that adding a motivational intervention to a standard behavioral obesity treatment program enhanced treatment outcomes. Dr. Dobrow DiMarco created the treatment manual for the motivational intervention and supervised therapists working on the study. Dr. Dobrow DiMarco currently supervises psychology trainees and has taught classes on cognitive-behavioral therapy, the treatment of eating disorders, and social psychology. Click Here to Visit Dr. DiMarco's Website.

Simon A. Rego, Psy.D., ABPP, ACT, Director of Clinical Training, Clinician, is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a Supervising Psychologist in the Adult Outpatient Psychiatry Department at Montefiore Medical Center, and Associate Director of the Cognitive Therapy Center of Long Island. He is also a consultant to the Institutional Review Board of the Biomedical Research Alliance of New York and the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center and an Adjunct Clinical Supervisor at both the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology of Yeshiva University and the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology of Rutgers University. Dr. Rego is Board Certified in Cognitive Behavioral Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology and is a Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. He is listed in the Who's Who in Medical Sciences Education and the Who's Who in America, and was the recipient of the 2008 Virginia Staudt Sexton Award for Distinguished Early Career Psychologists by the New York State Psychological Association. Dr. Rego’s expertise is in the treatment of anxiety, mood, sleep, and body focused repetitive disorders. He has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on topics such as panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarding, insomnia, depression, trichotillomania, and stress management. He has been featured as an expert in many national media outlets including CNN's American Morning, ABC's Good Morning America NOW, CBS's Eye on New York, ABC's Eyewitness News, AM New York, Newsday, Financial Times of London, MSNBC.com, WebMD.com, Weightwatchers.com, and HealthDay.com.

Click Here to See Dr. Rego's Media Appearances

Click Here to See Dr. Rego's Website

Jenny L. Taitz, Psy.D., Director of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program, Clinician, graduated Magna Cum Laude from New York University and earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology.  Dr. Taitz completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy.  She completed a pre-doctoral fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine where she specialized in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for co-morbid substance use and personality disorders and Behavioral Health. As an intensively trained DBT clinician, Dr. Taitz incorporates mindfulness, acceptance, and motivational enhancement with traditional cognitive behavioral therapy.  In addition to treating a diverse range of problems such as depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, specific phobias, social phobia and borderline personality disorder, she also provides psychotherapy to patients with medical problems. Her research has focused on the efficacy of a self-administered mindfulness intervention and mechanisms of change in mindfulness treatments. Dr. Taitz is an adjunct professor in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Yeshiva University and a regular contributor to the Urban Mindfulness blog.

Amelia Aldao, M.S., M.Phil., Extern, received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently in her last year of the Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at Yale University. Clinically, she has been trained in a cognitive behavioral approach with an emphasis on affective processes. As a result, she has incorporated many techniques drawn from emotion-related treatments, such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes et al., 1999), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT; Linehan, 1993) emotion-focused therapy (EFT; Greenberg, 2002), and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT; Segal et al., 2002). In addition, she has been a therapist for a randomized control trial of a new emotion-based treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (Emotion Regulation Therapy; Mennin & Fresco, 2010). She specializes in the treatment of anxiety and mood disorders. Her program of research focuses on the use experimental designs to delineate affective processes in psychopathology. To this end, she relies on a multi-method approach to measure the three emotional domains: subjective (e.g., self-reports), behavioral (e.g., facial expressions), and physiological (e.g., heart rate variability, skin conductance). She is particularly interested in the role of motivational processes and regulatory strategies across a wide range of disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder, and eating disorders. She has published articles and given talks at national conferences on the topics of emotion regulation and generalized anxiety disorder. Her research on generalized anxiety disorder was featured in the November’09 issue of Scientific American Mind.

Website: http://www.yale.edu/readlab/people/staffs/aldao.html

Tara Deliberto, M.A., Extern, earned her B.S. from Boston University. After graduation, she managed the Laboratory for Clinical and Developmental Research at Harvard University, headed by Matthew Nock, Ph.D. In collaboration with Dr. Nock, she published several book chapters focusing on personality disorders, anxiety, and self-injurious behaviors in addition to several scientific articles. Ms. Deliberto’s research mainly centers on dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), the psychophysiology of non-suicidal self-injury, implicit associations with suicide, and correlates of non-suicidal self-injury. She has given presentations at several national conferences on these topics and her research was cited in TIME Magazine in December of 2008. Currently, Ms. Deliberto is a third year clinical psychology doctoral candidate at Hofstra University, where she also obtained her M.A. Since starting her doctoral degree, she has treated anxiety and depression with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Lacey Beckmann, M.A., Extern, graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Human Development. She received her M.A. from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, where she is currently in her fourth year of doctoral training. Lacey has incorporated cognitive and behavioral therapies into her various clinical externship positions in the New York Metropolitan area. She has provided both individual and group therapy on medical units at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and St. Vincent’s Hospital, and has provided individual therapy at the Parnes Behavioral Medicine Clinic in the Bronx and the Community Mental Health center at Hoboken University Medical Center. Throughout her training, Lacey has worked with both children and adults in inpatient and outpatient settings. She has treated individuals presenting with a wide range of clinical issues including generalized anxiety disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, specific and social phobias, and a range of adjustment disorders. Additionally, Lacey has held research positions at Harvard University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she is currently conducting her dissertation research on the cultural influences of panic disorder.

Ayelet Kattan, PsyM, Extern, graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in psychology from Columbia University. She received her Master’s Degree in Psychology from Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, where she is currently in her fifth year of doctoral training. Ayelet has received intensive training and supervision in cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness meditation, substance abuse treatment, and motivational interviewing approaches. She has also completed coursework in dialectical behavior therapy at Rutgers University. Ayelet has held clinical externship positions at the Department of Veteran Affairs, The Program for Addictions Consultation and Treatment at Rutgers University, Rutgers Psychological Clinic, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), and Rider University Counseling Center. Through her clinical placements, Ayelet received training in clinical assessment, individual, family, and group psychotherapy, and has experience in both inpatient and outpatient settings. She has worked with a wide range of diagnoses and client issues, including generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse, and relationship problems. Moreover, Ayelet has held research positions at NYU Medical Center and at Rutgers University’s Center of Alcohol Studies, whereby she worked on a NIAAA grant examining individual and couples CBT therapy for women with alcohol dependence. Her dissertation research focuses on developing a model for cognitive-behavioral therapy supervision. As a clinician, Ayelet integrates cognitive-behavioral therapy with mindfulness and acceptance approaches in a flexible and compassionate manner.

Helen Butleroff Leahy, RD, CDN, offers nutrition counseling specializing in weight management, eating disorders, Type II Diabetes, GERD, IBS and medical conditions requiring nutritional intervention. Ms. Butleroff Leahy is a Registered Dietitian by The Commission on Dietetic Registration and Certified Dietitian Nutritionist licensed by NYS. She is winner of the "Certificate of Achievement Award" and "Activ8 Kids Mini Grant" from the NYS Department of Health for her nutrition program targeting obesity in NYC public school children. In addition to her private practice, Ms. Butleroff-Leahy gives nutrition presentations for the outpatient Psychiatric Clinic of New York Presbyterian-Cornell Hospital, for state legislators, United Nations Health forums, law firms and has been employed by GHI for TV segments on portion control, dehydration and healthy lifestyle choices. She also runs "The Nutrition & Fitness Education Intiative" that has now reached 2100 NYC school children. Click Here to visit her Website

Poonam Melwani, B.A., Editorial Assistant graduated Cum Laude from Queens College with a B.A. in Psychology and Anthropology. At Queens College, she was a member of the Anthropology Society and conducted research on Hamadryas Baboons. She focused on the grooming behavior between male and female hamadryas baboons in order to understand the concept of "biological markets." Additionally, she was an avid participant in the field of psychology as a member of Psi Chi, an assistant to a developmental psychologist, and a volunteer at CHEST, Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training. Currently, she is a research assistant at AICT and is in the process of obtaining her Masters in Psychology (Concentration on Animal Behavior and Conservation) at Hunter College.

Kelly Reilly, Intake Coordinator, received her B.S. magna cum laude from New York University in May 2007, where she structured an interdisciplinary program that forged connections between Culture and Communication Studies, Psychology, and Politics. At NYU, she was afforded the opportunity to travel to the culturally-rich nation of Peru to research the mestizaje , or the influence of the mixing of races. Specifically, she used leisure style and amenities as lenses through which to view the values, ideals, and overall standard of living of three distinct Peruvian social classes: los serranos, los criollos, and los limeños. Additionally, she wrote her honors thesis on the positive impact Buddhist practices (specifically mindfulness [of breathing, posture, action, feelings, consciousness, and mental objects]) can have on social interactions and processes. Prior to working at AICT, Kelly volunteered for the Campaign for Mental Health Reform. She plans to attend graduate school in Clinical Psychology.

William C. Sanderson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at Hofstra University. His primary areas of research include anxiety disorders, depression, and cognitive behavior therapy. Dr. Sanderson’s clinical expertise is in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for patients with anxiety and depressive disorders, and he has been treating and conducting research on such patients since 1983. Dr. Sanderson is a Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy and he has participated on numerous national committees, including the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV Anxiety Disorders Workgroup, and was recently the Chair of the American Psychological Association Division of Clinical Psychology's Committee on Science and Practice (a Task Force aimed at identifying and promoting the practice of empirically supported psychological interventions). He has published seven books and over 80 articles and chapters, primarily in the areas of anxiety, depression, personality disorders, and CBT.

All Content on this website is copyrighted © Robert L. Leahy, PhD. All Rights Reserved.


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