Kristina Washington, PhD

Kristina Washington, PhD, is the postdoctoral Trauma Fellow at the Yale Child Study Center. Dr. Washington received her Ph.D. in school psychology at Lehigh University and received her B.A. in psychology and criminology and a minor in children maltreatment advocacy studies from the Pennsylvania State University. During her undergraduate studies, she was selected as a McNair Scholar and conducted her thesis on the association between material social information processing and children's inhibitory control and school readiness. During her graduate training, she has had the opportunity to provide intervention and assessment services in schools, hospitals, residential facilities, and juvenile detention centers. Dr. Washington has directed individual therapy, group therapy, family therapy, crisis intervention, systems-level intervention, and assessment (psychoeducational and psychological) to children and adolescents with a wide range of behavioral health concerns. Kristina's research and clinical foci encompass disrupting the school to prison pipeline through prevention and intervention along the continuum. With an emphasis on supporting youth who are most vulnerable to this phenomena, Dr. Washington is passionate and experienced with serving youth who have experienced traumatic events, serving minoritized youth and their families, and serving youth with disabilities. Her dissertation is the culmination of her interests which uses ecological systems theory to examine how parenting, neighborhood context, and peers impact the mental health and school functioning of incarcerated adolescents.