Alaina Baker, Psy.D.

Dr. Alaina Baker is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Director of the Youth & Family Gender Identity Program at the Boston Child Study Center. She provides direct patient care in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for adolescents and young adults with PTSD, complex trauma, co-occurring suicidal behaviors and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). She provides gender-affirming care to LGBTQIA+ youth and caregivers, including behavioral health assessments for medical gender affirmation, caregiver and parent support, group and individual support for trans adolescents and young adults, and LGBTQIA+ community consultation and training services.

Dr. Baker earned her B.S. in Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience from Northeastern University where she conducted research and published an honors thesis exploring the moderators of the neurological processes and gaining insight in youth with mood and trauma-disorder-related symptoms. She earned her master’s and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology from the PGSP-Stanford Psy.D. Consortium. While in graduate school, she conducted extensive research on biological immune responsivity in youth and families with mood disorders as well as in youth with severe mood dysregulation and trauma-related disorders at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She has published textbook chapters in The American Psychiatric Association Publishing textbook of suicide risk assessment and management as well as Clinical Health Psychology. She completed a specialization in working with high risk and LGBTQIA+ youth populations which provided her specialized coursework, training in evidence-based interventions for trauma in LGBT youth, and clinical opportunities delivering evidence-based interventions in community, school, and inpatient and outpatient hospital settings throughout the Bay Area. Dr. Baker completed her predoctoral internship at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in the department of Child Psychiatry in New York City, where she worked on an interdisciplinary hospital team providing individual and group Dialectical Behavioral Therapy to children and adolescents with mood, anxiety, and/or trauma-related disorders and specialized in working with gender-diverse youth. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and trauma services at the Boston Child Study Center and currently teaches undergraduate courses in psychology and stigma, health, and discrimination.

Dr. Baker is passionate about recognizing the complexity of our intersectional identities and meeting youth and families exactly where they are while tailoring evidence-based treatments to create spaces of empathy, acceptance, and support.