Board Members

Joel L. Becker, Ph.D., the director of CBA, received his doctorate in 1977 from the University   of Georgia. He did his internship at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center where he was a Clinical Fellow in Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.Dr. Becker founded Behavior Associates and The Boston Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy in the late 1970’s. These were the early years of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy and Dr. Becker studied and interacted with the early leaders and pioneers in the field (e.g. Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, B.F. Skinner and others). He was active in the early years of his professional association serving as chair of several important committees including Professional Issues. During his years in Boston, Dr. Becker was on the clinical faculty of Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, the Veteran’s Administration and several psychoanalytical institutes (as a consulting CBT practitioner).


Dr. Becker moved to the Los Angeles area in1990 to assume the position of Co-Director to the Center for Cognitive Therapy in Beverly Hills. In addition to his responsibilities at the center, Dr. Becker has remained very active in the training of new clinicians. He is currently an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA and a Clinical Associate at USC where he teaches and supervises doctoral candidates in psychology. Also, he holds an appointment as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Bio-Behavioral Sciences at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA where he teaches and supervises psychiatric residents.

Dr. Becker was a visiting professor during the1999-2000 academic year at the University of Parma and at the University of Florence, Italy. In Italy he was involved in training graduate students in Cognitive-Behavior Therapy. During that year he also attended L’instituto per L’arte and Restauro where he received a certificate in Trompe L’Oiel and mural painting.

Rodney Boone, Ph.D.

Rodney Boone, Ph.D. is a Psychologist with over 20 years of experience treating  individuals with anxiety and mood disorders. He is an Associate Clinical Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Psychiatry, and is the Founder and Director of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center of Southern California, a group practice offering cognitive behavioral therapy for the mood, anxiety, and OC Spectrum disorders.  Dr. Boone lectures frequently on the application of CBT to various emotional disorders.

Dr. Levander provides comprehensive psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic services for the treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis, and anxiety disorders, as well as borderline personality disorder.  He has a private practice in Beverly Hills. Dr. Levander also provides mental health care treatment for the underserved population at a county affiliated mental health clinic. He is also an attending psychiatrist at the bipolar disorders clinic at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center where he supervises UCLA psychiatry residents. He completed a fellowship at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital and he now serves on the faculty at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital and at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
 
He is the only certified clinician in Southern California in the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy. Dr. Levander lectures and trains other health care providers about this research-validated method of treatment for the chronically depressed.  He is also trained in dialectical behavioral therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

 Dr. Maidenberg completed his doctoral and post-doctoral training at UCLA, and has served as a Clinical Professor and Research Associate for over a decade at UCLA. Dr. Maidenberg’s primary interest is in the treatment of anxiety disorders (e.g., social phobia, panic disorder), and he has published and given lectures on this topic to academic audiences, as well as through other media outlets (e.g., radio shows, TV news segments, etc.). Dr. Maidenberg also maintains a private practice.

Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine and Director of the Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Program at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Georgia and completed post-doctoral training and was a faculty member at Columbia University/NY State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Piacentini has authored over 140 papers, chapters, and books and has received numerous NIH and other grants addressing the etiology, assessment and treatment of childhood anxiety, OCD, tic disorders, and adolescent suicide. He is Chair of the Tourette Syndrome Association Behavioral Sciences consortium, Founding Fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, President-elect of the American Board of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Trichotillomania Learning Center. 

Dr. Piacentini is also Deputy Editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and an editorial board member for several leading psychology journals. He is a frequent lecturer and actively involved in training mental health practitioners how to treat youngsters with anxiety and similar problems.




Gerry Tarlow, Ph.D.
 
Gerald Tarlow received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Montana in 1974.  Since 1978 he has been on the faculty of UCLA in the Department of Psychiatry where he is currently a Clinical Professor and teaches CBT to psychiatry residents and psychology interns.  He was the Director of Psychological Services at the UCLA OCD Program from 1994 to 2006.   In 1986 he established the Center For Anxiety Management, an outpatient private practice specializing in the treatment of anxiety disorders.  Dr. Tarlow was awarded a Diplomate in Behavioral Psychology by the ABPP in 2001.  He is the author of the Clinical Handbook of Behavior Therapy for Adult Psychological Disorders and the Clinical Handbook of Behavior Therapy for Adult Medical Disorders.

FACULTY

Nancy Addison, Ph.D.
 
Dr. Addison is a licensed psychologist specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Psychology.  She is also a licensed Marriage Family Therapist.  She received her Ph.D. from UCLA in 1996.  She subsequently received post-doctoral training in cognitive therapy at the Center for Cognitive Therapy under the direction of Drs. Christine Padesky and Kathleen Mooney.  Dr. Addison also received post-doctoral training in psychosocial oncology at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center.  In 2007, she participated in learning a new cognitive-behavioral model of treating personality disorders under the direction of Drs. Padesky and Mooney.  Dr. Addison has had a private practice in Beverly Hills for over 15 years with a primary focus on the application of cognitive-behavioral treatments to a range of psychological and interpersonal conditions, including depression, anxiety, personality disorders, couples conflict, and coping with chronic health and pain issues.

Mudita Bahadur, Ph.D.

Mudita Bahadur received her Ph.D. in clinical Psychology from New York University in 1998.  While the NYU training gave Mudita a strong foundation in traditional psychotherapy models, Mudita also completed a concurrent training program in CBT from the American Institute of Cognitive Therapy in New York City.  Mudita has been practicing CBT in Santa Monica since 2000.  Mudita specializes in Cognitive-Behavioral treatments for children and their families, specifically focusing on mood disorders, developmental disorders, and Autistic-spectrum disorders.  Mudita also works with adults treating depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.   Mudita conducts psychological assessments in her practice, and also at Saint John’s Child and Family Development Center in Santa Monica.
 

Michele Berk, Ph.D.

Dr. Michele Berk is the Director of the Adolescent Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy Programs at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from New York University in 2001. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Aaron T. Beck at the University of Pennsylvania during which she conducted research on cognitive therapy with recent suicide attempters and received clinical training in this area. She also completed a clinical fellowship focusing on Dialectical Behavior Therapy at St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital in New York, NY. Prior to coming to Harbor-UCLA, she was the Program Director of the Youth Stress and Mood Program and the Project Director for the Emergency Care for Injuries in Youth research project at the UCLA School of Medicine. Her research and clinical work focuses on cognitive-behavioral treatment approaches for adolescent and adult suicidal behavior. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals on these topics, and is co-investigator (along with Dr. Joan Asarnow at UCLA) on grants from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and NIMH (R34) to study treatment for adolescent suicide attempters. 

Andrew Christensen, Ph.D.

Andrew Christensen is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon and did his internship at Rutgers University Medical School.  He studies couple conflict and couple therapy and has published over 100 articles on these and related topics.  He is co-author of the influential scholarly work, Close Relationships (Freeman, 1983, reprinted in 2002).  For therapists, he authored Acceptance and Change in Couple Therapy:  A therapist’s guide for transforming relationships (1998, Norton) with Neil S. Jacobson. He also completed a self-help book for couples, Reconcilable Differences (2000, Guilford) with Jacobson.  His therapy approach and research have been cited in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, USA Today, and other magazines and newspapers.

Christensen developed a treatment program for couples with Jacobson called Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy.  He directed a large, multi-site study at UCLA and the University of Washington, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, comparing Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy with Traditional Behavioral Couple Therapy.  This is the largest study to date of the effectiveness of marital therapy.  For more information on Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy, go to http://ibct.psych.ucla.edu   Dr. Christensen has a part-time practice devoted to couple therapy.

Jennifer Robles, Ph.D.
 
Dr. Robles is currently a licensed psychologist in private practice at the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Center of Southern California, which has office locations in Torrance and Glendale.  She specializes in treating clients with anxiety and mood disorders using a variety of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) techniques.  Dr. Robles received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Ohio State University.  She has provided CBT to a variety of clients throughout her graduate and post-doctoral training.  Dr. Robles completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, during which she provided treatment to clients with chronic depression utilizing the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) model, and also to clients with Borderline Personality Disorder using Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Theodore Robles, Ph.D.

Dr. Robles is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology, and a member of the Health Psychology core faculty. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology (Clinical-Health) from The Ohio State University, and completed his clinical psychology internship at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Psychiatry.

Current research interests:  Close relationships, physiology, and health; stress, skin barrier recovery, and biological mechanisms involved in skin disease; sleep and wound healing.