Dr. E. Joy Sasson-Gelman has focused her entire career on helping people cope with and adjust to challenges related to long-term illness, disability, and stress. She holds both a doctorate in Clinical Rehabilitation Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master's degree in Rehabilitation Counseling. She completed a predoctoral fellowship at the Ottawa Hospital in Ontario, Canada, where she worked long-term with individuals with HIV, hepatitis C, and other severe infections; musculoskeletal conditions such as amputation; chronic pain; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); and other medical conditions. Her postdoctoral fellowship in integrative health psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, further strengthened her skills in working together with clients' health care team, particularly primary care physicians as well as psychiatrists. Her understanding of the vocational rehabilitation process in private, public, and forensic settings also informs her interdisciplinary approach. She has experience working with individuals with life-changing trauma and disability as a result of injuries on the job and motor vehicle accidents.
She has received advanced training in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), has developed a standardized Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)-based intervention focused on improving quality of life for patients with chronic health conditions, and has taught master's level rehabilitation counseling students interpersonal-focused counseling techniques at San Francisco State University, doctoral-level health psychology students at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, and medical students at the University of California-San Francisco. When conducting therapy, her approach draws from these different techniques to find common principles: focus and build on a person's strengths, plan and carry out achievable goals in the real world, and explore new ways of making meaning out of an individual's thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Dr. Sasson-Gelman has been licensed in California since 2013 and in New York State since 2016; she is registered with the National Register of Health Service Psychologists and also maintains her Certified Rehabilitation Counselor credential. She also volunteers with the New York City Department of Health's Medical Response Corps.