Tessa Kritikos, Ph.D.

Biography

Tessa Kritikos, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of clinical psychology. She earned her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Boston University; completed a pre-doctoral internship in child, adolescent, and pediatric psychology at Rush University Medical Center; and completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Loyola University Chicago. 

Her program of research seeks to understand and improve the psychological health of families experiencing stress as a result of trauma, medical conditions, or mental health concerns. This program of research draws from clinical psychology, pediatric psychology, and developmental psychology.

Recently, she has focused on how individuals and families make meaning from stress or adversity. She has current lines of research examining benefit-finding/post-traumatic growth among 1) youth with a chronic health condition and 2) military families facing deployment. She is particularly committed to employing rigorous methodologies, adopting multi-informant, multi-method approaches, and using longitudinal research designs. 

Dr. Kritikos has experience conducting individual, family, and group therapy using principles from a variety of evidence-based treatments, including: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT), Parent Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), and behavioral parent training. 

She has an active research lab and is committed to mentoring students in the master’s Clinical Psychology and doctoral Health Psychology programs. 
 
Curriculum Vitae

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Areas of Expertise

• Clinical psychology
• Pediatric psychology
• Family-focused assessment and intervention
• Trauma and coping 

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