Sarah Parker, Ph.D.

Sarah Parker, Ph.D. is a Director and Co-founder of The Reeds Center. She has extensive training and experience using Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies (CBT) to treat anxiety disorders and eating disorders in a variety of formats and intensities. She works with adolescents and adults, and has particular expertise in the overlap between OCD and eating disorders.

Prior to opening The Reeds Center, Dr. Parker was an Instructor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. In this role, she served as a clinical researcher with the Eating Disorders Research Unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she provided CBT and intensive exposure and response prevention therapy (ERP) to individuals with eating disorders. At Columbia’s Day Treatment Program, she also provided CBT and psychodynamic /
process-oriented therapy groups to individuals with a wide range of severe psychiatric illnesses, including mood, anxiety, eating, substance use, and personality disorders.
Dr. Parker has sought out specialized training in many evidence-based therapies, including CBT, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and habit reversal training (HRT).

In addition to providing clinical services, Dr. Parker provides training and supervision to current psychology graduate students. She has also enjoyed teaching psychology courses to hundreds of undergraduate students.

Dr. Parker received her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. In between, she worked in publishing and public relations, both in the United States and abroad. Once she decided to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology, her research focused on the implementation of group- and classroom-based social and emotional learning interventions for adolescents within disadvantaged urban schools.

Dr. Parker is a member of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and the American Psychological Association.