Certified MBT Supervisors
The below clinicians are certified through Anna Freud in London to provide individual and group supervision in mentalization-based treatment (MBT)—to train other clinicians in the official or “adherent” version of MBT that is evidence-based in the treatment of borderline and antisocial personality disorders. They are the official trainers in MBT in the United States.
Natalie Brooks, MA, LMFT
Natalie Brooks, M.A., LMFT is a psychotherapist in private practice in southern California. She completed her undergraduate and graduate degree studies in Psychology at the University of Southern California. Natalie was trained in mentalization-based treatment (MBT) by Peter Fonagy, Anthony Bateman, and Trudie Rossouw and supervised in MBT by Robin Kissell, MD. Between 2008-2016, Natalie was on clinical staff at UCLA Semel Neuropsychiatric Institute’s Student Behavioral Health Services, where she found a passion for MBT after attending her first training in 2009. She played a vital role in developing the outpatient Mentalization-Based Treatment program for UCLA students with borderline personality disorder. In addition to private practice, Natalie enjoys supervising clinicians in MBT and sharing her enthusiasm for MBT as the Associate Director of the Mentalizing Initiative in California.
Lois W. Choi-Kain, MD, MEd
Lois W. Choi-Kain, MD, MEd, is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director Gunderson Personality Disorder Institute, formerly knowns as the Adult Borderline Center and Training Institute. In 2009, she developed the Gunderson Residence, an intensive, specialized residential program for adult women with severe personality disorders which uniquely integrates multiple evidence-based treatments for borderline personality disorder (BPD) in a rigorous and scientifically informed way. Dr Choi-Kain also founded the BPD Training Institute in 2013, a centre for proliferating evidence-based treatments for severe personality disorders, including mentalization-based treatment (MBT), transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP), dialectical behavior therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (DBT-PTSD), and general psychiatric management (GPM). Lois's research focuses on personality disorders, attachment, mentalization, psychotherapy, and accessibility and implementation of care.
Caleb Demers, LICSW
Caleb Demers, LICSW is a clinical social worker at McLean Hospital, specializing in the treatment of personality disorders, trauma disorders, and addiction. He works as an outpatient therapist in the Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) Clinic, delivering group and individual therapy. Caleb has been supervised by Bob Drozek, LICSW, and Brandon Unruh, MD, and he has managed admissions for the MBT Clinic since his employment there began. He has been a lead trainer for group facilitators and acts in a supervisory capacity at the Clinic. Additionally, Caleb works as the manager of training and education for the Social Work Department at Mclean Hospital, providing training opportunities for MSW candidates, early career social workers, and continuing education. In addition to MBT, Caleb is trained in ACT, CPT, PET, and psychodynamic psychotherapy, completing a fellowship at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.
Shauna Dowden, PhD
Shauna Dowden, PhD, is currently an attending psychologist for the Pavilion at McLean Hospital. She has previously worked within the McLean Mentalization-based Treatment (MBT) Clinic and Gunderson Outpatient Program as a senior MBT Supervisor within the BPD Training Institute at McLean Hospital. She maintains a full-time private practice, specializing in chronic suicidality, depression, anxiety, and trauma, as well as serious mental illness (bipolar illness, psychotic disorders). She completed intensive dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) training with Marsha Linehan in 2002, MBT training beginning in 2010, and transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) training in 2016-2017. She has employed these therapeutic modalities across treatment settings. In 2020, she completed a degree in Theology and Ministry at Boston College with a focus on spirituality and trauma. She has also been engaged in contemplative practices (meditation, mindfulness) for over thirty years, studying Buddhist psychology as well as Christian, Sufi, and Hindu theologies. Most recently, Shauna has begun providing equine-assisted psychotherapy (as depicted in her photo above).
ROBERT P. DROZEK, LICSW
Robert P. Drozek, LICSW, is a staff psychotherapist in the Personality Disorders Service at McLean Hospital, specializing in the treatment of personality disorders, trauma and dissociative disorders, and addictions. He is a teaching associate in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and clinical director of the Mentalization-based Treatment (MBT) Clinic at McLean Hospital. Originally trained in MBT in 2010, he currently serves as faculty in the basic and practitioner level MBT trainings offered annually through the Anna Freud Centre and McLean Hospital. His psychoanalytic writings examine the interface between psychotherapy and ethics, with an emphasis on the role of ethics in the patient’s therapeutic change. In MBT, he is the lead developer (with Brandon T. Unruh and Anthony W. Bateman) of MBT for Narcissism. Bob has published on using MBT to address the problem of law enforcement violence, and he has developed the domain-based theory of mentalization, a streamlined heuristic to simplify the teaching and practice of MBT. He is author of Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process and Mentalization: Utilizing Reflection to Heal from Borderline Personality Disorder. He is co-author of Mentalization-based Treatment for Pathological Narcissism: A Handbook (2023). Bob serves as chair of MBT USA, and he is in private practice in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Robin Kissell, MD
Robin Kissell, MD, is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Between 2005 and 2016 she was director of the Borderline Personality Disorder Initiative, a residency-training clinic founded on MBT and designed after the original day-hospital program at Halliwick Unit. Currently she is Director of The Mentalizing Initiative, a non-profit organization offering training to community-based clinicians in MBT and other treatments for those with personality disorders known to enhance mentalizing. She was trained in MBT by Peter Fonagy, Anthony Bateman, and Trudie Rossouw and supervised in MBT by Anthony Bateman. In addition to keeping a busy private practice, she supervises clinicians in MBT, teaches the core curriculum on personality disorders to psychiatry trainees, consults to clinical teams and research projects implementing MBT, and speaks frequently at conferences on personality and personality disorders.
Daniel A Kupper, PhD
Daniel A. Kupper, PhD, is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he supervises and teaches residents about psychodynamic approaches to personality disorders. He was trained in MBT by Peter Fonagy, Anthony Bateman, and Trudie Roussow, and was supervised by Anthony Bateman. He is an accredited MBT Tutor (Los Angeles Training Center) and practitioner, and he served as Senior MBT Psychotherapist and Supervisor at UCLA’s Borderline Personality Initiative. He maintains an active independent practice, consults with treatment teams setting up MBT programs, supervises clinicians engaged in MBT training, and teaches seminars on MBT to psychology graduate students and clinician groups.
Owen Scott Muir, MD
Owen Scott Muir, MD, is a dual board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, and co-author of Adolescent Suicide and Self-Injury: Mentalizing Theory and Treatment. He has held academic appointments at Hofstra-Northwell, NYU and Baylor, and is the Chief Medical Officer for iRxReminder, which is the recent recipient of an SBIR Grant from the NIMH for their work in AI identification of tardive dyskinesia. He is also the Senior VP for strategy at Acacia Clinics and an advisor to Brainify.ai. He has over 200 academic presentations and publications to his credit, focusing on high-risk populations and the role of interventional psychiatry. His main research interest is in neuromodulation for treatment resistant mood disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder. He has over 60,000 hours of clinical experience and is an official supervisor for the practice of mentalization-based treatment (MBT). Dr.Muir creates Continuing Medical Education materials for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and writes for the general public on topics at the intersection of healthcare and society on his Frontier Psychiatrists Substack. He is licensed in NY, CA, and IL.
Edward Patzelt, PhD
Edward Patzelt, PhD, is the founder of Patzelt Psychology, a Boston-based private practice, and co-founder of Mentalizing Minds, advancing mentalization-based treatment (MBT) across the academic, clinical, and business sectors. He completed his original MBT training in 2016 at McLean Hospital, served as supporting faculty for MBT Basic Training at McLean Hospital, and consulted as an MBT supervisor for the University of Chicago Department of Psychiatry. He is an MBT Supervisor through the Anna Freud Centre in London and a certified MBT Practitioner for Adolescents and Families. He specializes in personality disorders and complex comorbidity, with recent work on co-occurring borderline personality disorder and alcohol use disorder, including an invited publication in the American Journal of Psychotherapy and a book chapter in Good Psychiatric Management: Borderline Personality Disorder & Alcohol Use Disorder. He received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from Harvard University, trained at the Gunderson Personality Disorders Institute at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School, and completed his clinical internship at the Minneapolis VA and postdoctoral fellowship at the Chicago DBT Institute™. His wider research spans computational models of decision-making and psychopathology, with peer-reviewed publications in Biological Psychiatry, Personality Neuroscience, and the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science.
Carla Sharp, PhD
Carla Sharp, PhD, is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty and Research, and director of the Adolescent Diagnosis Assessment Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT) clinic and the Developmental Psychopathology Lab. Her work has significantly advanced the scientific understanding of the phenomenology, causes, correlates and treatment of personality pathology across the lifespan, with a specific focus on mentalizing as cause, correlate, and mechanism of change. She has published over 380 peer reviewed publications, 50 book chapters, and 8 books, including Mentalizing in Psychotherapy: A Guide for Practitioners. Her research has been continuously funded by the NIH for over a decade. She is the recipient of the 2016 Mid-Career Award, North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders, the 2018 Award for Achievement in the Field of Severe Personality Disorders from the Personality Disorders Institute and Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center, New York, the Kernberg Award for foundational contribution to the study of personality pathology in youth in 2024, and she is listed as top 2% of scientists worldwide. She serves as editor or co-editor on multiple journals. She served on the American Psychiatry Association (APA) workgroup for updating the APA guidelines for borderline personality disorder, and on a workgroup for evaluation of nosological changes for personality disorder. She is a licensed psychologist and continues to be clinically active.
Amie Roe, LCSW
Amie Roe, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice, serving clients in New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania. She provides individual and group mentalization-based treatment (MBT), with a focus on treating borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and binge eating disorder. Amie completed her MBT training through McLean Hospital and the Anna Freud Centre and continues to receive clinical supervision from Brandon Unruh, MD, and Bob Drozek, LICSW. In addition to her MBT expertise, she completed a two-year training program in intersectional feminist psychotherapy at WTCI in New York.
BRANDON T. UNRUH, MD
Brandon T. Unruh, MD, is the medical director of the Gunderson Residence and founding director of the Mentalization-based Treatment (MBT) Clinic at McLean Hospital. He is an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and an MBT trainer and supervisor through the Anna Freud Centre in London. His clinical approach is anchored in the practice of evidence-based treatments for personality disorders, including MBT, dialectical behavior therapy, transference-focused psychotherapy, and good psychiatric management. His core academic publications and interests are in the areas of personality disorders, suicidality, spirituality, and flourishing. He is co-editor of the book Borderline Personality Disorder: A Case-based Approach (2018), and co-author of Mentalization-based Treatment for Pathological Narcissism: A Handbook(2023). He has a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.