Dr Sarah Cassidy
Founder and Director of Clinic Services
Sarah Cassidy, PhD, is an Educational, Child and Adolescent Psychologist. She specialises in the assessment and treatment of learning, emotional/behavioural difficulties, mental health difficulties and neurodevelopmental differences with clinical populations. She is the Founder and Director at Smithsfield Clinic, a private psychology service in Ireland for children, adolescents and their families using only evidence based scientific treatment methods. She has also worked as an educational psychologist within the Irish school system for the last 20 years, conducting assessments and advising parents and schools how to best support children with learning and emotional/behavioural challenges. In this context, she has developed classroom and school wide interventions for improving educational, behavioural and mental health outcomes.
Dr Cassidy is also the co-director of the newly launch New England Centre for OCD and Anxiety, Irish Midlands Branch, with Dr. Lisa Coyne. This is the first specialist intensive outpatient OCD service in Ireland and has oversight by NECOA Boston, USA. Drs Cassidy and Coyne also offer parent training via Smithsfield Clinic and NECOA. Drs Cassidy and Coyne are also co-authors on several upcoming books for children on using ACT for coping with the very common experience of anxiety. The first two of these books under contract will be out in 2022.
Dr Cassidy also lectures in Psychology at Maynooth University, Ireland, where her specialist research areas include child and adolescent developmental psychology, counselling and educational psychology. She is an honorary lecturer at University of Cardiff, Wales. She also assists with doctoral supervision of various candidates in other psychology departments nationally and internationally and collaborates on research projects with these same students. Smithsfield Clinic is also a recognised host for educational psychology placement students at two Irish universities. Dr Cassidy is a Peer Reviewed ACT trainer and trains psycho-therapists and allied professionals in both professional and post-graduate settings throughout Ireland. Dr Cassidy is a reviewer for two different scientific journals. She is a clinical supervisor and advisor to several services offering psychology services to children and adolescents. She is frequently invited to deliver guest lectures in her areas of research.
Dr Cassidy received her PhD in Psychology in the field of Relational Frame Theory and its articulation with intellectual development. She was author of the first empirical demonstration of the positive effects of intensive derived relational responding skill interventions on intelligence (Cassidy, Roche & Hayes, 2011), and has co-authored several papers and book chapters since that have validated and extended this effect. Dr Cassidy is a very experienced workshop leader and has delivered over 30 workshops worldwide in the domains of ACT, RFT, educational and counselling psychology. She is co-founder of Relational Frame Training Ltd, which developed the online SMART training software. She continues to conduct research in this area in an effort to keep pace with the ever changing needs of modern humans. She is a professional member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science (where she is also the chairperson of the membership committee) and a panel member of the Scheme for Commissioning of Individual Psychological Assessments (SCPA) which assists with providing National Educational Psychological Services in Ireland where NEPS do not have a psychologist in place. Finally, Dr Cassidy is a full professional member of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a chartered member of the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI).
