Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs)

Dr. Christiane Manzella comes to the Seleni Institute with extensive experience as a clinician and professor of psychology. For more than 20 years, Dr. Manzella maintained a private practice in New York City where she provided psychotherapy and supervision in several areas, including grief and bereavement, her specialty. Dr. Manzella specializes in working with parents after miscarriage, stillbirth, and child loss. Her clinical work also includes helping women and couples navigate fertility challenges as well as the potential complexities of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Her focus is on helping those with whom she works find ways to draw on their strengths and take the next steps that are right for them.

Dr. Manzella’s clinical approach incorporates the many advances in understanding grief and trauma as well as the ways to effectively support those who are bereaved. For example. for some individuals who are grieving, the next step might be letting go. Or it might be recognizing and nurturing their ongoing bond with and love for the child they have lost. She also brings her awareness and focus to potential mood or anxiety disorders that can complicate bereavement and trauma. She is particularly skilled at supporting parents as they explore the decision to pursue subsequent pregnancies following loss or to build a family in other ways.

Dr. Manzella addresses practical and psychological elements in all facets of clients’ lives, including career exploration. She facilitates understanding the shifts in internalized identity that often occur during life transitions and pregnancy, building on her 20 years of experience as a New York University faculty advisor and professor.

Dr. Manzella is also an expert on the relationship between loss and trauma. She is an empathic clinician who uses empirically derived interventions to establish safety and recovery and that are recognized as effective treatments for resolving grief and trauma, as well as mood and anxiety disorders. She continues to embrace and use mindfulness-based clinical interventions, including those she developed through her research and teaching at NYU and 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. She carried out her doctoral dissertation research at Beth Israel Medical Center hospice, with postdoctoral supervision in grief and bereavement work. Dr. Manzella also has had specialized training through the Center for Prolonged Grief, Postpartum Support International, the Postpartum Stress Center, and the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy. Dr. Manzella is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association of Death Educators and Counselors (ADEC). She has completed a three-year term as a member of the ADEC board of directors. She continues to teach at New York University and makes her home in New York City.

David brings an analytically informed approach to his work with individuals and couples navigating such life transitions as pregnancy and parenthood.

Originally from the Midwest, David received his degree in social work from New York University and has completed psychoanalytic psychotherapy training through the Contemporary Freudian Society. In addition to his work as a clinician, David is an active volunteer with the SPRING project which promotes education and affordable treatment of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders in the New York City and Washington DC areas.

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.