Pediatric psychologist, Katie Herrington, PhD, recently joined Nashville Child & Family Wellness, which offers an array of behavioral health services under one roof. She brings to the West Nashville practice a mission to help families and children dealing with chronic stress. Where stress used to be mostly confined to the middle-aged, overworked individuals, more and more psychologists are seeing children and adolescents dealing with anxiety.

“I teach children and adolescents how skillful awareness of the mind-body connection guides healthy decision-making, including those daily choices that shape how they care for themselves mentally, emotionally, and physically,” Herrington explained. “It can be as simple as a child noticing the body’s signals that she is mad and needs to cool down before speaking. That skill is a superpower for an eight-year-old.”

Herrington earned a degree in child development and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Vanderbilt University. She fulfilled her clinical internship at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders (TRIAD) and the Division of Developmental Medicine at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital.