Michelle Comas, PhD

Michelle Comas is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. She currently serves as both the Co-Director of the West Haven Mental Health Clinic (WHMHC) and the Director of the Child and Adolescent Service at WHMHC, a satellite clinic of the Connecticut Mental Health Center that more notably serves to enhance the access and provision of outpatient mental health services to children, adolescents, and young adults with serious mental illness and who are underserved with limited financial resources. Dr. Comas is responsible for the administration and program development of the WHMHC, especially of the Child and Adolescent Service, and provides direct supervision and training to various level trainees completing their placements at WHMHC, including the predoctoral fellows from Yale University's Doctoral Internship in Clinical and Community Psychology. Dr. Comas additionally serves as a member of the internship program's Executive Training Committee, which provides for the governance, management, and direction of the internship training program. She also participates and engages in local councils, committees, and in additional consultation and services in the West Haven area that are focused on substance use prevention, truancy, and preschool or early childhood intervention.

Dr. Comas has extensive experience working with children, adolescents, young adults, and their families in a variety of clinical settings. She completed her doctoral degree in clinical psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and subsequently completed her predoctoral internship training at the UC Davis Children's Hospital Child and Adolescent Abuse Resource and Evaluation (CAARE) Diagnostic and Treatment Center, in Sacramento, California, and her postdoctoral fellowship training in child and family forensic psychology with the Juvenile Court Consultation Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts. She has expertise in the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents living in family systems affected by trauma and early adversity as well as in the development of child and family intervention for youth and caregivers with significant psychiatric difficulties. She additionally possesses specialized training and experience in the forensic evaluation of youth, parents, and families involved with the child welfare and court systems for the purposes of informing optimal recommendations for the treatment and placement of court-involved youth and families.