Faculty
Anne Benham, MD
Clinical Professor
Dr. Anne Benham is a child psychiatrist with expertise in the evaluation and treatment of young children, ages 0-5 years old. She specializes in the treatment of young children who have experienced trauma, both physical and emotional, and works with families to address behavioral, emotional, and relationship issues, as well as the psychological sequelae of developmental problems and family stressors. Dr. Benham also works with families dealing with medical illness in either the child or the parent/sibling, with death or loss of a parent, with the effects of divorce on a young child, and with the psychological complexities of adoption, whether at birth or from foster care or overseas adoptions. Dr. Benham also has extensive experience helping young children who have difficulties with feeding and toileting.
Dr. Benham uses play approaches in assessment and treatment to understand the world from the child's perspective. These include child directed play, CBPT (cognitive behavioral play therapy designed for preschoolers), parent-child play, and specific techniques to address fears and phobias. Dr. Benham does much of her work with a parent in the session and collaborates with parents closely in all cases.
Dr. Benham was educated at Harvard (BA) and Columbia (MD), received postgraduate training in pediatrics, psychiatry and child psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stanford where she has taught for many years. She has written chapters on assessment and on play therapy for textbooks in the fields of Infant and Preschool Psychiatry. She worked for many years at the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto on multidisciplinary approaches to assessment and treatment of young children. She started and helped to develop this clinical program at the CHC.
Rebecca Rialon Berry, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
Rebecca Rialon Berry, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist with expertise in the evaluation and treatment of anxiety, ADHD, and disruptive behavior disorders in children, adolescents, and young adults. She provides comprehensive treatment to families, including cognitive-behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and behavioral parent training. She coordinates the Stanford behavioral parenting skills program, and is active in providing behavioral and mental health consultation to schools, teachers, and community providers. Dr. Berry teaches a psychopathology course in the PGSP-Stanford Psy.D. Consortium Program and is involved in the teaching and training of Stanford psychology interns, post-doctoral fellows, psychiatry residents, and second year psychiatry fellows. Dr. Berry has extensive experience providing evidence-based treatments for social anxiety, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, selective mutism, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive spectrums disorders, as well as tics, trictotillomania and other body-focused repetitive behaviors. Her research interests include school-based mental health interventions and the development and dissemination of innovative psychosocial treatments for anxious and trauma-exposed youth.
Dr. Berry received her Ph.D. in School Psychology from Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Berry completed a clinical psychology internship at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and the Children’s Health Council in Palo Alto, California, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Victor G. Carrion, MD
Professor
Director, Early Life Stress and Pediatric Anxiety Program
Dr. Carrion’s work in PTSD offers an exciting example of the scientific discoveries and improvements in care that anxiety-related research can yield. Based on his neuroscience discoveries, Dr. Carrion has developed innovative treatments for children, demonstrating the applicability of research to clinical practice. By conducting multi-disciplinary research on the behavioral, academic, emotional, and biological late effects of experiencing traumatic stress during development, he has identified unique pediatric manifestations and biomarkers, and developed a protocol to effectively treat youth experiencing ongoing and severe stress.
His research is recognized throughout the discipline of child psychiatry, and has gained national and international renown. His pioneer finding demonstrating that hormones secreted during periods of high stress can impact the anatomy of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, and their respective functions on attention, executive function and memory has had an impact on the field’s understanding of how mental illness can impact a child’s brain during development. This information is critical in the development of innovative and effective treatments.
In recent years, Dr. Carrion’s practice has taken on an international scope. Dr. Carrion has worked with children in Australia after the Victoria bushfires, Spain youth in foster care and Haiti earthquake survivors, and he has also worked with children in New Orleans after Katrina and consulted with Middle East practitioners on how to increase resilience in children exposed to war. Dr. Carrion is often sought for expert advice after national tragedies, such as, hurricaine Sandy, the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, the Boston bombing and the recent Asiana Airlines crash. Through his clinical practice and groundbreaking research, he has become recognized as a pioneer in understanding and combatting the effects of early life stress in children and adolescents.
Dr. Victor G. Carrion is a Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the Stanford Early Life Stress Research and Anxiety Program, and Medical Director of the Anxiety Clinic. He is in the faculty at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and Associate Editor for the Journal of Traumatic Stress. After completing medical school training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Carrion completed his residency at University of Pennsylvania and his fellowship in Child Psychiatry and Research at Stanford University. Since joining the faculty at Stanford, Dr. Carrion’s research has concentrated in understanding how early life stress, such as traumatic experiences, alter behavior and emotion and the role of brain structure and function in these findings. He is also interested in the development of new treatment modalities that are focused and targeted. He has received awards from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the National Association for Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Carrion serves in the Mental Health Oversight and Accountability Commission for the State of California where he chairs the Cultural and Linguistic Competence Committee.
Hilit Kletter, PhD
Clinical Instructor
Dr. Hilit Kletter is a licensed psychologist with specialization in childhood trauma and posttraumatic stress. She has extensive experience treating a wide range of traumas including physical and sexual abuse, neglect, community and domestic violence, medical trauma, sudden/violent death, and emotional abuse. Dr. Kletter helped develop and oversees the training program for Stanford Cue-Centered Therapy, a treatment for youth with chronic trauma. She has experience doing assessments as well as individual, group, and family psychotherapy utilizing evidence-based practices such as cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure, and behavioral management to treat anxiety disorders including posttraumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social and specific phobias. She has worked in a variety of settings such as community mental health, day-treatment programs, schools, a domestic violence shelter, and outpatient clinics. She provides training and consultation to school staff and after school programs, community agencies, and youth organizations. In addition, Dr. Kletter supervises undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and medical students. Her research interests include risk and resiliency factors for childhood trauma and PTSD, and improvement of treatment and preventative interventions
Dr. Kletter received her BA in anthropology from the University of Washington and was a Koret Foundation Fellow while completing her PhD studies at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at the Child and Family Guidance Center in Northridge, CA and her post-doctoral fellowship at Kaiser Permanente Child Psychiatry in Milpitas, CA.
Helen W. Wilson, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
Helen W. Wilson, Ph.D. is licensed clinical psychologist with expertise on the effects of trauma across the lifespan. She provides clinical services for children, adolescents, adults, and families affected by trauma and other forms of anxiety and stress (such as medical illness or divorce). Dr. Wilson particularly enjoys working with teens who have experienced trauma, including dating violence or abuse. Her approach to treatment incorporates cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness, and family systems therapies. She is actively involved in teaching and training psychology doctoral students and fellows. In addition to working with the Early Life Stress and Pediatric Anxiety Program, she provides services in the adult Psychosocial Treatment Clinic and is the site director for the East Palo Alto Academy High School Mental Health program. She offers a unique lifespan perspective for addressing problems at all stages of development and feels quite comfortable providing treatment for individuals ranging in age from 5 to 75.
Dr. Wilson leads an active research program focused on relationships between childhood trauma and health risk behavior in adolescence and adulthood. She is the Principal Investigator of GIRLTALK: We Talk, a longitudinal study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) that examines links from childhood violence exposure to dating violence and sexual risk in young women from low-income communities in Chicago. Dr. Wilson has authored or co-authored over 25 papers and book chapters related to these topics and regularly presents her work at local and national conferences. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.
Dr. Wilson is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She then completed pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at the Yale University Child Study Center, where she focused on interventions for youth exposed to violence and trauma. She also completed a research fellowship at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where her research on the long-term consequences of childhood trauma began.
Sanno E. Zack, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
Co-Director, Early Life Stress and Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Program
Dr. Zack is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, specializing in adolescent and young adult trauma, mood and anxiety disorders, and interpersonal difficulties. She also works extensively with college students and early-mid career professionals. She is trained in DBT, ACT, and Prolonged Exposure, among other psychotherapeutic approaches, and runs the Stanford DBT Program for adult women and adolescent girls. Dr. Zack is Assistant Director of the Child and Adolescent Outpatient Services Program at Lucile Children’s Hospital at Stanford and Co-Directs the Early Life Stress and Pediatric Anxiety Clinic. She teaches diagnostic assessment and psychotherapy courses for the PGSP-Stanford Psy.D Consortium Program and is involved in the teaching and training of Stanford psychology interns, post-doctoral fellows, psychiatry residents, and second year psychiatry fellows. Her research is focused on the role of therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy process and outcome.
