NEW!Maternal Mental Health Intensive Online: Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorders

Christiane Manzella, PhD
Lead Instructor & Senior Psychologist

Dr. Manzella possesses extensive experience as a clinician providing psychotherapy and supervision and as a professor of psychology at New York University.

Dr. Manzella’s focus at Seleni is to provide clinical care and to provide training and supervision, especially around grief and bereavement, her specialty. She is an empathic clinician, helping women, men, and families navigate the complex terrain of grief related to perinatal loss, manage the unique issues associated fertility challenges, and move through the challenges of recovering from perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Dr. Manzella is also an expert on the relationship between loss and trauma. She continues to use and teach mindfulness-based clinical interventions, including those she developed through her research and teaching as an international consultant on managing loss and trauma.

Dr. Manzella earned both her master's degree in clinical psychology and doctorate in counseling psychology from New York University.

Dr. Manzella has also completed postdoctoral training and has carried out research related to grief, bereavement and trauma. She has also completed postdoctoral trainings at Postpartum Support International, the Postpartum Stress Center, and the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy.

Ann Simmons, PhD, LCSW
Psychotherapist

Dr. Simmons has more than 20 years of clinical experience. As a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, she focuses on how women experience their own bodies and emotional lives before, during, and after pregnancy. She believes that the many different, and often confusing, feelings around pregnancy deserve to be explored, and that some feelings, such as depression, may be unexpected. In therapy, a woman can more easily understand and overcome frightening and confusing feelings as well as more freely celebrate her condition. Also, in the unfortunate case of pregnancy loss, Dr. Simmons has expertise helping clients manage grief and mourning. Dr. Simmons recently returned to New York after more than 10 years in St. Louis, Missouri. As a faculty member at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, she taught a variety of courses in the adult psychoanalytic training program and was part of the clinic and practicum program there. She received her doctorate in comparative literature from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York and earned her MSW from New York University. She has trained at both IPTAR in New York and at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.