Barbara Easterlin, PhD
is a California licensed clinical psychologist and a member of the American Psychological Association’s newly formed Climate Change Psychology Community of Scholars and Practitioners. Until 2020, Barbara was a member of the UC Berkeley Psychology Department’s clinical faculty.
Currently, Barbara is the Co-President of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America (CPA-NA), a non-profit dedicated to supporting clinicians working at the intersection of mental health and climate change. From 2021 to 2023, she co-developed a 60-hour Climate Psychology Certificate Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco (CIIS Climate Psychology in Therapeutic Practices Certificate). In addition, she delivers mental health workshops in support of climate front line workers, including activists, scientists, and first responders.
With a master’s degree in Social Ecology and Environmental Psychology and a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, Barbara Easterlin is interested not only in the intersectional impact of climate change and environmental injustice on mental health but also on the positive impact of nature on an individual’s stress response. She is particularly interested in the psychological process of denial and the positive benefits to mental health arising from emotionally informed activism.
Barbara is a mom of two 20 somethings, avid hiker, and student of Tibetan Buddhism. She currently resides in Jackson, Wyoming on the boundary of the Grand Teton National Park with her husband, Dan, and their amazing terrier, Maisie.
Prior to dedicating her practice to climate psychology, Barbara was a clinical neuropsychologist and mindfulness-based psychotherapist for most of her career, specializing in ways the brain regulates attention, attachment, and learning. She has a research background in neurobiological approaches to couples therapy and also in the ways nature impacts mental health and encourage clients to spend time in the wild as a way to heal. During her career, she specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of children and adolescents with ADHD, learning disabilities, and emotional disorders. Barbara frequently provided parenting consultation for parents of children with ADHD. She also trained clinicians on working with couples in which one or both have ADHD.
For the time being, she is on extended sabbatical from private practice and not accepting new referrals except for individuals and couples seeking treatment specifically for climate distress. She is researching, writing, and offering professional training on the psychological and existential dimensions of the climate crisis, the psychology of denial, and strategies for helping groups and individuals overcome barriers to taking positive action.
More details: Barb obtained her bachelor's and master's degrees from UC Irvine in Social Ecology/Environmental Psychology, where she developed a keen interest in how places in nature positively impact mental health and human stress. A long standing practitioner of Vipassana and Tibetan Buddhism, Barbara’s doctoral research on mindfulness meditators was funded by the Fetzer Institute. She completed her clinical internship at California Pacific Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry. Always interested in research as well as clinical practice, Barbara was a Research Psychologist at the University Of Washington, working with John Gottman, PhD, a renowned researcher of marital stability. As a member of the UCSF Medical Staff for many years, she performed ADHD/learning profile evaluations as part of a multi-disciplinary team and facilitated clinical and research-based Parent Training Groups for parents of children with ADHD and difficult temperaments. She also led research-based organizational and social skills training groups for elementary school age children at UCSF. Inspired by this work, she founded Authentica Center for Girls in 2003, and developed a 9-month group therapy protocol for helping girls develop positive friendships within a context of a safe and supportive group of peers (www.authenticacenter.com was acquired by Sinead Broughton, PsyD in 2019).
Barbara Easterlin, PhD is a member of:
California Psychological Association (CPA)
American Psychological Association (APA)
Climate Psychology Alliance, North America
Association for Contextual Behavioral Sciences (Climate Justice & Action Special Interest Group)