Graham Berlin is a Clinical Psychologist (in supervised practice) who provides therapy and assessment to older adolescents, emerging adults, and adults. He completed his pre-doctoral residency at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) with rotations at the Gender Identity Clinic and the University of Toronto’s Student Counselling Centre. He has also completed clinical placements at St. Michael’s Hospital with the Academic Family Health Team, Sunnybrook’s Intensive OCD Treatment Program, and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s Youth Wellness Centre. Graham has presented to healthcare professionals on gender affirming care practices, contributed to the development of accredited programs to support gender affirming care in healthcare institutions, and has been involved in various research projects and presentations focused on the mental health and wellbeing of sexual and gender minorities. In addition to his work at Step Stone Psychology, Graham works at the Youth Wellness Centre at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.

In his clinical practice, Graham takes a person-centered and integrative approach. This means that his training is grounded in understanding mental health symptoms and challenges through the interrelation of thoughts/beliefs, behaviours, emotions, and physical sensations. However, to meet the diverse needs of clients, Graham draws from other modalities of therapy that may focus on experiencing emotions and identifying associated needs (emotion-focused); identifying values; practicing mindfulness and acceptance (ACT); and use of skills, such as those from dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT). This means that, though his training is grounded in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), he flexibly incorporates emotion-focused, acceptance, and dialectical behaviour therapy approaches into his work to meet individuals’ unique needs.

As a part of being client-centered, Graham also seeks to understand the various identities each individual holds, and the strengths and challenges of these intersecting identities. Graham’s approach is evidence- and trauma-informed, culturally responsive, affirming, and collaborative. Though he works with a variety of concerns, challenges, and populations (trauma, depression, anxiety, life transitions, emotion regulation issues, and school and work stress), he has specialized training in gender affirming care and assessments, working with older adolescents and emerging adults, and the treatment of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders and social anxiety. In addition to therapy, he also completes comprehensive psychological assessments for individuals looking for diagnostic clarity across areas of learning, attention, social-emotional functioning, and mental health.

Graham is supervised by Dr. Nina Vitopoulos, C.Psych.