Hannah Cooper, PhD

Hannah Cooper, PhD, is a psychological associate in the Anxiety Disorders Center and the Mood Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute. Dr. Cooper earned her doctorate in clinical psychology with an emphasis on pediatric behavioral health. Predominantly a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, Dr. Cooper employs cognitive behavioral strategies with children, adolescents, and families, while also being flexible in her approach to match each family’s individual values and cultural beliefs.

Dr. Cooper has experience providing individual, family, and group therapy to children ages 3 to young adulthood. Collaborating with caregivers is an important part of her work. Her clinical style balances warmth and humor with a dedication to research-supported interventions.

Dr. Cooper is passionate about working with families of children and youth who struggle with disruptive behaviors and highly intense emotions, which include defiance, argumentativeness, temper outbursts, and/or aggression. She is certified in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and has experience employing PCIT in children with autism, anxiety disorders, disruptive behavior disorders, and complex medical conditions. Dr. Cooper is expanding her specialization in evidence-based intervention as a member of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) team, where she provides DBT to children, teens, young adults, and families.

Dr. Cooper has years of experience in caregiver coaching, assisting caregivers in understanding their child’s pattern of difficult behaviors. A key emphasis in her work is helping caregivers parent from the angle of preventing tantrums and emotion dysregulation rather than reacting to them.

Dr. Cooper is also skilled in treating anxiety disorders in youth through cognitive behavioral therapies, such as exposure and response prevention (ERP). She has worked with children and adolescents presenting with OCD, social anxiety, specific phobias, and generalized anxiety disorder. She has specific training in trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) for treating trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in youth.

Dr. Cooper is supervised by Drs. Omar Gudino, PhD, ABPP (CA PSY# 34415), Jenny Louie, PhD (CA PSY# 26947), and Lauren Allerhand, PsyD (CA PSY# 31344).

• Certified PCIT provider
• Certified provider in Helping Our Toddlers, Developing our Children’s Skills group parenting intervention
• Pre-licensure requirements met for certification in TF-CBT
• Certified Infant Toddler Developmental Specialist in the state of Florida

• Doctoral internship, Pediatrics and Behavioral Health, University of South Florida
• Externship, Kaiser Permanente, Richmond Department of Child Psychiatry
• Externship, Stanford Ronald McDonald House
• Externship, Autism Center of Northern California

• PhD, Clinical Psychology, Palo Alto University
• BA, Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Virginia