Sarah Cassidy, PHD

Meet Sarah!

Sarah Cassidy, Ph.D., is an Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychologist and a chartered member of the Psychological Society of Ireland. She specializes in the assessment and treatment of learning and emotional/behavioural difficulties with clinical populations. She is also the Founder and Director at The Smithsfield Clinic, a private practice in Ireland for children, adolescents and their families using largely ACT and RFT-based treatment methods. She has also worked as an educational psychologist within the Irish school system for the last 18 years, conducting assessments and advising parents and schools how to best support children with learning and behavioral challenges. In this context, she has developed classroom and school wide interventions for improving educational, behavioral and mental health outcomes. Dr. Cassidy is a Peer-Reviewed ACT trainer and trains psychotherapists and allied professionals in both professional and post-graduate settings throughout Ireland. She received her Ph.D in the field of Relational Frame Theory and its articulation with intellectual development. She was author of the first empirical demonstration of the positive effects of intensive derived relational responding skill interventions on intelligence (Cassidy, Roche & Hayes, 2011), and has co-authored several papers since that have validated and extended this effect. Dr. Cassidy is a very experienced workshop leader and has delivered over 30 workshops worldwide in the domains of ACT, RFT, educational and counselling psychology. She is co-founder of Relational Frame Training Ltd, which developed the online SMART training software. She continues to conduct research in this area in an effort to keep pace with the ever changing needs of modern humans. She is a professional member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science (where she is also the chairperson of the membership committee) and a panel member of the National Educational Psychological Service (SCPA) in Ireland. Finally, her forthcoming book, co-authored with Dr. Lisa Coyne, Tired of Anxiety: A Guide to Living Your Life Anyway, Written Especially for Children, is forthcoming in Fall 2022 from Pavilion Press.

To contact Dr. Cassidy O'Connor directly, email Dr.sarahcassidy@newenglandocd.ie.