Shannon Savell, PhD

I am a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in early childhood mental health concerns. I am very passionate about supporting the whole family system from a strengths-based, trauma-informed, culturally responsive lens. I provide family focused treatments like Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and PC-CARE both of which can be adapted for a variety of early childhood mental health concerns including behavioral concerns, emotion dysregulation, ADHD, anxiety, depression, and ASD for children ages 1-10.

My research program focuses on promoting women’s mental and physical health during pregnancy, postpartum, and early parenthood through relational interventions. My current and future work seeks to: (1) examine how relational interventions to promote women’s health can be more easily implemented and disseminated (e.g., from maternal fetal medicine, OBGYN, or family medicine clinics, NICU); and 2) identify the psychological (relational functioning, depressive/anxiety symptoms) and biological (e.g., neuropeptide hormones such as oxytocin and stress hormones such as cortisol) mechanisms of intervention change, explore comparative effectiveness across formats (e.g., group, individual, app-based) and identify for whom and when relational interventions are best delivered. My long-term career objective is to develop relational interventions that are evidence-based, scalable, accessible, and cost-effective to support the mental and physical health of the whole family system through targeting the relationship system as a unique risk and protective factor.